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

An interesting Great War group of three to Miss Kate John Finzi, a Red Cross Nurse at Boulogne whose War Diary was published in 1916

1914 Star (K. J. Finzi); British War and Victory Medals (K. J. Finzi) these original but possibly slightly later issues, mounted as worn, together with B.R.C.S. gilt and enamel proficiency medal, good very fine (4) £400-500

Sold with Kate Finzi’s own copy of her book Eighteen Months in the War Zone, the record of a woman’s work on the Western Front, Cassell & Co., 1916, with numerous marginal notes replacing the ravages of the censor’s pen: ‘In this volume I have added a few of the passages “Deleted by Censor.” Some parts, however, he found so thrilling that he excised them altogether and we have never seen them since! Aug. 25th 1921.’ Covering the period October 1914 to February 1916, Kate Finzi gives a graphic picture of the daily life in the base hospitals at Boulogne, where tens of thousands of wounded, maimed and mutilated soldiers incessantly arrived, to be passed on to England, or to linger there till death came as a happy release from their sufferings.