Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War ‘Western Front’ D.S.O., M.C. group of five awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel A. F. L. Lindsay, Irish Guards, one of only four such combinations to the Irish Guards in the Great War

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel, with integral top riband bar; Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; 1914-15 Star (2. Lieut. A. F. L. Gordon. I. Gds.); British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaves (Lt. Col. A. F. L. Gordon.) mounted as worn but lacking pin, good very fine (5) £2,000-£2,400

D.S.O. London Gazette 12 December 1919: ‘Capt. (T./Lt.-Col.) Alan Fancis Lindsay Gordon, M.C., Irish Guards.’

M.C. London Gazette 1 January 1917: ‘Lt. (temp. Capt.), I. Gds.’

M.I.D. London Gazette 23 May 1918, and 12 January 1920.

Alan Fancis Lindsay Gordon was the younger son of Colonel William Gordon of Threave, late Royal Scots and the Durham Light Infantry, who died at Threave on 11 April 1913. He served with the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards as a Second Lieutenant in France from 2 May 1915. He is mentioned on numerous occasions in Rudyard Kipling’s history, The Irish Guards in the Great War. Of the fighting on the Somme in September 1917, he states ‘... the Adjutant, Captain Gordon, and Lieutenant Smith were the only officers who had come through both actions... Captain Gordon, the Adjutant, was recommended for an immediate M.C., which he received with the next New Year honours at the same time as the C.O. received a D.S.O.’

At Arras in January 1918: ‘On the 15th all wiring and defence-work ceased - “employed solely on trying to keep trenches passable.” In spite of which the mud gained. Men’s boots were pulled off their feet, and it is on joyous record that when Captain Gordon, the Adjutant, tried to get up Johnson Avenue, their only communication-trench, he stuck up to his waist in mud and water and, lest he should be engulfed, had to wriggle out of his gum-boots, which came up to his thighs, and continue in his socks. The gum-boots, empty, sank out of sight like a wreck on the Goodwins.’

Four days later, on the 19th: ‘... Captain A. F. L. Gordon, M.C., was also wounded on that date, but not enough to send him to hospital. He was riding into Arras with Captain Woodhouse, the M.O. - also a man of charmed lives - and just behind the railway embankment came in for a complete barrage of heavy stuff, intended for Battalion Headquarters. Neither he, nor any one else, ever understood why they were not blown to pieces. the doctor’s horse wounded was the only other casualty.’

Major A. F. L. Gordon died at Threave, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire, on 26 November 1957.

Sold with some copied research and a copied group photograph, including Gordon, of the Irish Guards with the King ‘before their departure for Constantinople’.