Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Second World War M.C. group of five attributed to Chaplain to the Forces 4th Class the Rev. P. C. Cazalet, Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, who was awarded the Coronation Medal for services as a chorister at King George V’s Coronation in 1911 and decorated for his gallant deeds on attachment to the 2/Loyals in Johore and Singapore in early 1942

Military Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse officially dated ‘1945’; 1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; War Medal 1939-45; Coronation 1911, this last privately engraved, ‘Peter Crofton Cazalet’, mounted as worn, good very fine and better (5) £800-1000

M.C. London Gazette 13 December 1945. The original recommendation states:

‘This officer accompanied the Battalion during the fighting in Johore and Singapore in January and February 1942. He worked unceasingly among the forward troops assisting the wounded and ministering to the dying, never sparing himself and taking no thought for his own safety. His example was most inspiring and his bearing under fire created universal admiration. He was invariably cheerful and confident and his presence was always a material source of high morale among the troops.’

Peter Crofton Cazalet, who was born in 1900, was a chorister at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and was present at Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the Coronation in 1911 (London Gazette 23 June 1911, refers). Ordained in the early 1920s, he went out to South Africa, but with the advent of hostilities he returned home to take up appointment as a Chaplain to the Forces 4th Class, in which capacity he was embarked for the Far East in 1941. Following his subsequent gallantry on attachment to the 2nd Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, in Johore and Singapore, he was taken P.O.W. and interned at Changi, thence the Caldicolt Estate Camp and, in August 1942, embarked with an ‘overseas party’.