Auction Catalogue

4 & 5 March 2020

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 42 x

.

4 March 2020

Hammer Price:
£800

A Great War ‘Western Front’ M.C. group of seven awarded to Captain H. H. McColl, West Riding Regiment, later Royal Flying Corps, Royal Air Force, and Indian Army

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. H. H. McColl. W. Rid. R.); British War and Victory Medals, with small M.I.D. oak leaves (Capt. H. H. McColl. R.A.F.); 1939-45 Star; Burma Star; War Medal, very fine (7) £900-£1,100

M.C. London Gazette 14 January 1916.

M.I.D.
London Gazette 1 January 1916 and 24 December 1917.

Hugh Herbert McColl was born on 7 September 1893, son of an old Cliftonian and one of six brothers educated at the school, 1907-12. He represented the school in Boxing at Aldershot and went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1912; winner of the Freshmens Lightweight Boxing that year and represented Cambridge University at Boxing. He afterwards won the 3rd Army Officer’s Lightweight Boxing Championship in 1916. He was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant, on 17 September 1914; Lieutenant, 1 July 1915; temporary Captain, 5 February 1917.

McColl was commissioned into the 9th (Service) Battalion, West Riding Regiment, which was formed at Halifax in September 1914. He landed in France on 15 July 1915, at Boulogne. Captain McColl was later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and qualified as an Observer in the Royal Air Force on 31 May 1918, before returning to France where he served in No. 38 Squadron. He was wounded three times during the war.

Following the end of the war he remained with the R.A.F. until transferring to the Indian Army in 1921, having gained a Forestry Diploma at Cambridge earlier in that year. He was appointed Assistant Conservator of Forests, Indian Forest Service, 1921. Captain, Indian Army Reserve of Officers, 26 August 1929, with Seniority 16 February 1925; Major 1931; Deputy Conservator of Forests 1933. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was a Captain serving with the Reserve of Officers on the Army in Burma; Commandant, Japanese P.O.W. Camp, Burma, 1939; Staff, Italian P.O.W. Camp, India, 1941-42. He resigned from the Army in June 1944, and resigned from the Forest service in 1947. He was the author of
Working Plan for the Myitttha Forest Division, for the period 1937-38, and for the Burma Government, 1951-52.