Orders, Decorations and Medals

Four: Serjeant Henry Lyon, 6th South African Infantry, late Lieutenant, South Lancashire Regiment

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 2 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State (Lieut., S/Lanc. Rgt.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps (Lt., S. Lanc. Rgt.); British War and Bilingual Victory Medals (Sjt., 6th S.A.I.) good very fine (4) £280-320

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of medals awarded to those having the surname 'Lyon'.

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Henry Lyon was born at Woolwich Arsenal on 10 August 1872, the youngest of four soldier sons of Colonel Francis Lyon, of the ‘Appleton Hall Lyons’. He was educated at Prince of Orange House, Wellington College, 1885-88. He served for a time with the Foreign Office in Algeria, and in 1894 became the Private Secretary to the Agent General of the Niger Coast Protectorate. By the time of the Benin Massacre he was an Assistant District Commissioner at Sapele, and met the survivors on their way back down the river.

He left in 1897 and on 25 May was commissioned into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the South Lancashire Regiment. He served with them in the Boer War, and at one stage was in command of a Maxim gun detachment. He remained in South Africa, attached to the Army Service Corps, when his Battalion returned to England in July 1901, and he eventually resigned his commission on 20 June 1903.

On 4 December 1915, then working as a Farm Manager, he enlisted as a Private in the Machine Gun Section of the 6th South African Infantry. He served with them as a Serjeant in the campaign in German East Africa but falling ill with a tropical disease, he was discharged on 30 March 1917 as being temporarily unfit for further war service.

He left to farm at White Thorns, Emangeni and by 1920 was a Planter at nearby Felixton. Latterly retiring to Castle Drive, Horley, Surrey, he died on 22 November 1940. With copied research.