Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War M.B.E. group of four to Captain A. Harwood, Royal Army Medical Corps

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Military) Member’s 1st type breast badge, hallmarks for London 1918; Queen’ South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (6799 S. Major, R.A.M.C.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, (6799 Serjt-Maj., R.A.M.C.), rank re-impressed; 1914 Star (Hon. Lieut. & Q.M., R.A.M.C.), together with a renamed British War and Victory Medal pair inscribed to ‘Captain A. Harwood’, very fine and better (6) £220-260

M.B.E. London Gazette 7 June 1918. ‘Captain Alfred Harwood, Statistical Branch, Department of Director-General, Army Medical Service’.

Alfred Harwood was born in Stepney, London. A clerk by occupation, he attested for the Medical Staff Corps on 29 June 1885, aged 19 years 8 months. With them and later, the Royal Army Medical Corps, he served in Nigeria, March 1899-July 1900 and South Africa, August 1900-November 1902. For the latter service he was awarded the Queen’s medal with three clasps and the King’s medal with two. Attaining the rank of Sergeant-Major in March 1900, he was discharged after 25 years of service on 26 June 1909, having been awarded the L.S.& G.C. Medal. Leaving the army, he was employed as Soldier Clerk in the War Office. Recalled to the colours with the outbreak of war in 1914, he was commissioned a Quartermaster with the honorary rank of Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. serving in France and Belgium during 1914-15, he ended the war with the rank of Captain, being demobilised in November 1920, aged 55 years. Sold with a number of copied service papers.