Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The General Service Medal awarded to Captain Lord Frederick Cambridge, Coldstream Guards, the nephew of King George V and Queen Mary, who was killed in action in Belgium on 15 May 1940

General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine (Lieut. Lord F. C. E. Cambridge. C. Gds.) extremely fine £600-800

Lord Frederick Charles Edward Cambridge was born His Serene Highness Prince Frederick of Teck in Vienna, Austria, on 24 September 1907, the second son of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Teck, a minor member of the British Royal Family (and the brother of the future Queen Mary), who was at the time serving in Austria as the British Military Attaché.

During the Great War, in response to anti-German feelings, H.M. King George V decided to change the Royal Family’s House name from the German-sounding Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the British-sounding Windsor; he also renounced all German titles for members of the Royal Family who were British subjects. As a result, by Royal Warrant dated 14 July 1917, Prince Adolphus relinquished his title of Duke of Teck, in the German Kingdom of Württemburg, and instead chose the surname of Cambridge, after his maternal grandfather the Duke of Cambridge (1774-1850), the seventh son of King George III. As a result, His Serene Highness Prince Frederick of Teck became plain Mr. Frederick Cambridge. However, his status as a commoner was not long lived; in gratitude to his brother-in-law for having relinquished his German title, H.M. King George V elevated him to the British peerage as Marquess of Cambridge, and Frederick, as the younger son of a Marquess, became styled Lord Frederick Cambridge.

Commissioned into the Coldstream Guards, Lord Frederick served in pre-War Palestine, and then during the Second World War as a Captain with the 1st Battalion as part of the British Expeditionary Force. He was killed in action in Belgium on 15 May 1940, on which date his Battalion was heavily engaged in Northern Leuven, and is buried in Heverleee War Cemetery, Belgium.

The title Marquess of Cambridge became extinct in 1981 upon the death of Lord Frederick’s elder brother, who had succeeded their father as 2nd Marquess of Cambridge in 1927.