Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria. Including a superb collection of medals to the King’s German Legion, Police Medals from the Collection of John Tamplin and a small collection of medals to the Irish Guards

South Africa 1877-79, 1 clasp, 1879 (Lieut. R. Mc.Gilwray Martin, 2/3rd Foot) minor contact marks, very fine £550-650

Robert Walcott McGillivray Martin entered the 3rd Foot - The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) as a Lieutenant in 1871. He was with them in the Zulu War 1879 and serving in Pearson’s Flying Column was present in the engagement at Inyezane, 22.1.1879 and the subsequent siege of the mission station at Eshowe. Promoted Captain in December 1879, he was then appointed to the Reserve of Officers. In 1884, in the Parish of Dunmore, Co. Galway, he married Emily Agnes Jeffreys and subsequently had five children: Gerald Jasper (1887), Richard Archer Walcott (1889), Mildred Dora (1890), Geoffrey Clogstown (1892) and Raby Flora (1895). The three boys were to have military careers. Gerald Jasper Martin became a Captain in the 6th battalion Royal Irish Regiment and died on the operating table in the Military Hospital, Gibraltar in 1920. Richard Archer Walcott Martin, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, was killed in action in Belgium on 16.8.1917. Geoffrey Clogstown Martin, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, was killed in action in France on 2.8.1916.

Sold with an interesting archive of original telegrams and letters addressed to Captain Martin of Monkstown, Co. Dublin:

Telegram from the War Office informing of the death of G. C. Martin, another from Buckingham Palace expressing regret; letters (2) from the commanding officer and a brother officer of Lieutenant G. C. Martin, who, they state, had been shot by a sniper; letters (3) from the commanding officer and a brother officer of Lieutenant R. A. W. Martin, who was killed by rifle fire; a letter from the Police Office, Gibraltar re. the headstone for Captain G. J. Martin.
Also with the identity disk of Lieutenant R. A. W. Martin; several paper cuttings re. the death of Lieutenant G. C. Martin; sundry photographs, several copied birth, marriage and death certificates and the book Fearful Hard Times, by I. Castle & I. Knight, in which Lieutenant R. McG. Martin is mentioned.