Orders, Decorations and Medals

An important Great War M.C. group of six awarded to Squadron Leader E. L. Conran, 21st Lancers, London Yeomanry, Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force
Military Cross, G.V.R.; 1914 Mons Star (Lieut., 2-Co of Lond.Y.); British War and Victory Medals (Major, R.F.C.); General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Iraq (S/L., R.A.F.) the last with official correction to surname; Egypt, Order of the Nile, Commander’s neck badge in silver, gilt and enamels by Lattes, nearly extremely fine (6)

M.C. London Gazette 1 January, 1915. This Gazette announced the very first awards of the Military Cross, Conran’s being one of the first three won by the Royal Flying Corps.
M.I.D. London Gazette 19 October, 1914, and 5 January, 1915.
Order of the Nile London Gazette 18 November, 1919.
Eric Lewis Conran was born in Brisbane, Queensland, on 22 August, 1887. He was a pre-war member of the Territorial Force and was commissioned as Lieutenant in the 2nd County of London Yeomanry (T.F.) on 12 August, 1912. He was an early flyer and gained Royal Aero Club Pilot’s Licence No. 342 on 22 October, 1912, flying a Caudron at Hendon. He was appointed a Flying Officer, Royal Flying Corps, on 17 April, 1913.
Upon the outbreak of war he joined No. 3 Squadron and flew with them to France on 13 August, 1914. Conran took with him his Blériot Parasol monoplane with which he had recently been issued. This machine was cared for by Air Mechanic J. T. B. McCudden, who was later to win immortality in an outstanding career as a fighter pilot. McCudden recorded that one morning Lieut. Conran ‘left the aerodrome on the Blériot Parasol to bomb Laon railway station, with the following loads of bombs: Sixteen hand grenades, two shrapnel bombs, each one in a rack on the outside of the fuselage, out of which the pilot had to throw them by hand, and a Mélinite bomb tied on to an upper fuselage longeron with string, so that when he wanted to unload this bomb he had to cut the string first with a knife and then push the bomb overboard.’
Captain Charlton and Lieut. Conran were responsible for bringing in the information on August 24th, 1914, which led to the order for the great Retreat from Mons. They were on reconnaissance when they spotted the German enveloping movements at Peruwelz and Charleroi. Had these enemy movements succeeded, instead of being out-manoeuvred by retreat, the British Army would have been decimated. It was due to this information that the Royal Flying Corps graduated from being a force on probation to its place as the ‘eyes of the Army.’
The following month he was awarded a commission in the Regular Army as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 21st Lancers, and shortly afterwards Lieutenant. He became a flight commander and temporary Captain on 28 November, 1914. Whilst flying a Morane of 3 Squadron he was seriously wounded in the back and arm in March 1915, and returned to England. He became Officer Commanding the Experimental Flight at Central Flying School and, in April 1916, became the first commanding officer of the newly raised No. 46 Squadron at Wyton. He returned to France in May 1916 to command No. 29 Squadron.
He served in Egypt, Palestine and Iraq before returning home to H.Q. No. 7 Group at Andover on 13 April, 1922. He became sick on 4 November, 1923, and died in the Service on 6 January, 1924.
The lot is sold with a quantity of Air Reports from 24 August, 1914, to 13 March, 1915, and an original portrait photograph of the recipient.