Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

‘In distant retrospect it seems strange how fully one became conditioned to an existence in which one could as Kipling put it, ‘jest at the dawn with Death.’ One accepted the brutal philosophy that ‘the only good Huns are dead Huns.’ Equally, one acquired a fatalistic attitude about one’s own chances of survival - disregarding, for instance, the whip-crack of a stray high-velocity bullet coming past in the open at night (if one’s ear sang it had probably been close); and preserving stoical calm under bombardment in which the next ‘crump’ might obliterate one’s own section of trench. One became hardened to seeing men killed or wounded, and to hearing that another friend had gone; we buried our dead as best we could. Danger apart, we endured days and sometimes weeks of discomfort when our trenches were kilt-deep in liquid mud. Yet with it all we usually remained cheerful, with a sense of humour tending to the macabre.’

Sir Arthur Thomson reflects on his time out in France 1915-18.

A Knight Bachelor’s inter-war C.B., Great War O.B.E. group of six awarded to Sir Arthur Thomson, late Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and a long served Secretary of the Medical Research Council

Knight Bachelor’s Badge, 2nd type breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, hallmarks for London 1949; The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, C.B. (Civil) Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt, hallmarks for London 1932; The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Military) Officer’s 1st type breast badge, silver-gilt, hallmarks for London 1919; 1914-15 Star (2 Lieut. A. L. Thomson, A. & S. Highrs.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Capt. A. L. Thomson), very fine and better (6) £800-1000

Knight Bachelor London Gazette 1 January 1953.

C.B. London Gazette 3 June 1933.

O.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

Arthur Landsborough Thomson was born in Edinburgh in October 1890, the son of a Professor of Natural History, and was educated at the Royal High School, Aberdeen Grammar School and the universities of Aberdeen, Heidelberg and Vienna - he was in the latter city when Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s body was returned for state mourning, of which event, and his subsequent flight to Switzerland, he later wrote.

A pre-hostilities member of the University Company of the 4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders (1909-12), Thomson also served in Aberdeen University’s O.T.C. and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders in May 1915. Ordered to France with the 11th Battalion that October, he remained actively employed until invalided home suffering from trench fever in June 1916, having in the interim seen much fighting and served as Battalion Bombing Officer - ‘in the Hohenzollern Redoubt I was the third to be Battalion Bombing Officer within a single day.’

Returning to active service with the 10th Battalion before the year’s end, he transferred to an appointment in 9th Division in March 1917, and was serving as an Acting Lieutenant-Colonel and Deputy Assistant Controller of Salvage by November 1918. He was awarded the O.B.E. and twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 20 December 1918 and 5 July 1919, refer).

Resigning his commission in September 1919, Thomson joined the Medical Research Council, in which capacity he served on many leading committees and government studies, ultimately as the Council’s 2nd Secretary, and was awarded the C.B. in 1933 and knighted in 1953. Thomson, who was a keen mountaineer and member of the Alpine Club, and also renowned in the field of ornithology, died in 1977; sold with extensive copied research, including part of a typescript of his unpublished memoir The Romance and Science of Birds - An Ornithologist’s Life, in which several pages are devoted to his Great War experiences.