Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare Great War M.M. group of three awarded to Miss Stella Primrose Dickson, Voluntary Aid Detachment, attached First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, and afterwards Auxiliary Territorial Service

Military Medal, G.V.R. (Miss S. Dickson); British War and Victory Medals (S. P. Dickson, V.A.D.), mounted as worn, together with her F.A.N.Y., St. Omer Hospital and A.T.S. badges, good very fine (7) £2200-2500

M.M. London Gazette 30 July 1918:

‘For conspicuous devotion to duty during an hostile air raid. All these lady drivers were out with their cars during the raid, picking up and in every way assisting the wounded and injured, and showed great bravery and coolness, and were an example to all ranks. They also carried to safety and helped in every way many French civilians.’

The other ladies decorated on the same occasion were Miss Katherine Fabling, Miss Josephine Pennel and Miss Margaret Davidson, all of whom, like Dickson, were on attachment to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (F.A.N.Y.).

Stella Primrose Dickson was born at Blackheath, Kent, in July 1892, the only child of Haughton Dickson, and was educated at West Heath School, Hampstead, and at Bedales School, near Petersfield, Hampshire.

As per her entry in Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Leslie’s published roll of lady M.M. recipients from the Great War, from June 1915 ‘she was engaged at various times in canteen work, farm work, driving Army Service Corps motor cars, and in clerical work at the Admiralty.’ However, in August 1917, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (No. 198, London) and was sent out to France as a motor ambulance driver in January 1918, where she was attached to a F.A.N.Y. corps convoy at St. Omer - here, then, the scene of her M.M.-winning exploits during an enemy raid on 18 May 1918.

Invested with her decoration by King George V at Buckingham Palace in May 1919, Dickson was also awarded the British Red Cross Society’s Special Service Cross in the same month. She subsequently served as Secretary of the F.A.N.Y. (Ambulance Car Corps) at Beauchamp Place in London, and was commissioned as a 2nd Subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service in May 1941, but relinquished her commission in December 1942 on attaining the age limit; sold with a Great War period St. Omer booklet of postcards.