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

The mounted group of nine miniature dress medals attributed to Piper to the King and Regimental Sergeant-Major H. C. Forsyth, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, late Scots Guards, Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, Wittebergen, South Africa 1901; British War and Victory Medals; Army L.S. & G.C., E.VII.R.; Royal Household Faithful Service Medal, G.V.R., ‘1905-1925’, with clasp, Thirty Years; Royal Victorian Medal, G.V.R., silver; Coronation 1911, silver; Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937, mounted court style as worn, very fine and better (9) £200-240

Henry Christie Forsyth was born in Edinburgh in 1872. He joined the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards in 1887 as a Piper and was promoted Pipe Major in 1899. As a Pipe Major he saw service in South Africa with the Scots Guards. In 1905 he was appointed Piper to the Prince of Wales - later George V. In 1910 he was appointed Piper to the King. With the outbreak of war, Forsyth volunteered for active service and in February 1915 was appointed Pipe Major to the 14th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He served in France as Divisional Sergeant-Major to the 40th Divisional Infantry Base Depot, June 1916-December 1917 and was Regimental Sergeant-Major at No. 11 Convalescent Depot, Buchy, France, December 1917-January 1919. After the war he returned to the Royal Household as the King’s Piper, a position he held until his retirement on 6 June 1941 when aged 69. He was retained as Extra Piper to George VI until his death on 26 June 1946.

Sold with copied research and a copied photograph of Forsyth wearing his medals. Also two books: Malcolm, C. A., The Piper in Peace and War, London, 1993 and A King’s Story, The Memoirs of H.R.H. The Duke of Windsor, K.G., 1953, reprint - both with references to Forsyth. In the latter is a picture of Forsyth playing the pipes leading a ‘squad’ formed of the Royal Children - the future Edward VIII and George VI, the Duke of Gloucester and Princess Royal, marching in Highland dress, armed with wooden rifles.

The Duke wrote of him, ‘Forsyth had been a pipe major in the Scots Guards ... He had been born in humble circumstances, and I recall my surprise when he told me one day that when he was just my age he had never worn shoes even in winter. Every morning just before eight, carrying his pipes, the kilted Forsyth appeared in the garden under my father’s (George V) window. On the stroke of the hour the morning silence would be rent by the skirl of a Scottish march while the piper strode back and forth playing under my father’s window. My father took this reveille for granted, but I always thought that it was a trial to my mother (Queen Mary), who no doubt felt that there were gentler ways of being roused to the day’s obligations’. Not put off, the Duke later recalls that he was taught the use of the pipes by Forsyth.