Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Royal Military College of Music Cousins Memorial Prize Medal, by Mappin & Webb, London, obverse: bust of Cousins facing right; reverse: crowned lyre, ‘Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall’ (Pupil James L. T. Hurd. 1st. Battn. The Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.), 44mm., bronze; together with a bronze medallion for the Centenary of the Light Division 1908, in Mappin & Webb box of issue, edge bruise to first, good very fine £40-50

James ‘Jock’ Lyne Thorne Hurd was born in Portsmouth in April 1878 and grew up in the Portsea Island Union Workhouse, before receiving his education at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover. He attested for Princess Louise’s (Argyll and Sutherland) Highlanders, 9 May 1893, and went to the School of Music at Kneller Hall, winning the Cousins Memorial Prize Medal in 1905. He was appointed Bandmaster of the 2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, May 1905, and served with the Regiment throughout the Great War (entitled to British War Medal only). In 1919 he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (London Gazette 12 December 1919), and the following June became the Bandmaster of the Royal Artillery Gibraltar Band. In 1922 he returned to Portsmouth, as Bandmaster, Royal Artillery Portsmouth Band, before being appointed Lieutenant and Director of Music, Irish Guards, 18 March 1929. He retired with the rank of Captain, 8 April 1938, and died at home in Richmond, Surrey, in 1968.