Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

The M.V.O. group of eight to Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Birdwood, 2nd Baron Totnes of Anzac, late Probyn’s Horse

(a) The Royal Victorian Order, M.V.O., Member’s 4th Class breast badge, silver-gilt, gold and enamels, the reverse officially numbered ‘536’

(b) British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (2.Lieut. C. B. Birdwood)

(c) India General Service 1908-35, 2 clasps, Mahsud 1919-20, Waziristan 1919-21 (Lieut. C. B. Birdwood, 2-76 Pjbis.)

(d) India General Service 1936-39, 2 clasps, North West Frontier 1936-37, North West Frontier 1937-39 (Major Hon’ble C. B. Birdwood, Probyn’s Horse)

(e) War and India Service Medals, both unnamed as issued

(f) Portugal, Order of Aviz, 5th Class breast badge, silver-gilt and enamels, court mounted as worn, nearly extremely fine (8) £1500-2000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Christopher Bromhead Birdwood, the only son of Field Marshal Lord Birdwood, G.C.S.I., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., C.I.E., D.S.O., and Janetta Hope Gonville, daughter of Colonel Sir Benjamin Bromhead, 4th Bart., was born at Twickenham on 22 May 1899. Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead of Rorke’s Drift fame was his great uncle. He spent his early childhood in India where his father was on the staff of Lord Kitchener. Educated at Clifton and Sandhurst, he was appointed A.D.C. in the spring of 1918 to his father then commanding I Anzac Corps on the Western Front, and later the Fifth Army. In 1919 he was appointed to the 5th Lancers (Probyn’s Horse) and served in the Waziristan campaign of 1919-20. He was A.D.C. to his father when C-in-C Northern Army, India, 1920-24, and when Commander-in-Chief, India, 1929-30.

In 1931 Birdwood married at New Delhi, Elizabeth Vere, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George Ogilvie, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., of the Indian Political Service. Vere Birdwood, whom he divorced in 1954, had a few words to say on ‘marrying in to Probyn’s Horse’ in after years: ‘The life itself was excessively boring, trivial, claustrophobic, confined and totally male orientated. The army wife was not expected to do anything or be anything except a decorative chattel or appendage of her husband. Nothing else was required of her whatsoever’. She further recalled the ‘very strong unwritten law that regimental officers could have little affairs with wives of other regiments, but to do so with a wife in your own regiment was much frowned up. So strongly was this law obeyed that in a Frontier station, when the husband was away campaigning, it was generally considered wise for the wife left behind to have a young officer to sleep overnight in the bungalow as a guard. As far as I know this privilege, if you can call it that, was never abused.’

Birdwood was away campaigning again in Waziristan in 1937-38. In 1939 he was appointed Major commanding the Governor of Bombay’s Body Guard, and later in the year he came to England in charge of the King’s Indian Orderly Officers. At the end of their tour Birdwood was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, 4th class, whilst the King’s Indian Orderly Officers were appointed to the 5th class of the Order. He retired from the Indian Army in 1945 and the same year led a British medical team in Germany.

His long experience of Indian affairs led to a second career of writing and lecturing. In 1946 he produced A Continent Experiments, followed IN 1953 by A Continent Decides. In 1956 he published Two Nations and Kashmir, ‘an admirably solid, informed and fair assessment of the long standing dispute between India and Pakistan’. In the late 50’s and 60’s he interested himself in Middle Eastern affairs, and was in Baghdad in June 1958 when the Iraq revolt erupted, reseraching a biography of Nuri-as-Said, an activity which brought him into contact with leading figures on both sides of the conflict. He succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Birdwood in 1951 and was an active member of the House of Lords. He took a keen interest in the doings of his old regiment up until the time of his death, being an occasional contributor to the regimental newsletter, and a regular attender of the Probyn’s lunch at the Hurlingham and the Indian Cavalry Dinner at the Cavalry Club, Piccadilly. Lord Birdwood died on 5 January 1962.

Refs: Probyn’s Horse Newsletter (NAM); Khaki and Gown (Birdwood); Plain Tales From the Raj; Debrett’s Peerage; The Times.