Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Captain G. H. Hill, Royal Air Force, late Royal Navy, Royal Engineers and Northumberland Fusiliers, onetime Metropolitan Police

East and West Africa 1887-1900, 1 clasp, Benin 1897 (Ord., H.M.S. St. George); China 1900, no clasp (Ldg. Smn, H.M.S. Arethusa); British War and Victory Medals (Q.M. & Lieut.); Coronation 1911, Metropolitan Police issue (P.S.), mounted as worn, generally very fine (5) £400-500

George Henry Hill was born in Islington, London in April 1878 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in August 1893. Joining the ship’s company of H.M.S. St. George as a Boy 1st Class in August 1895, he witnessed active service in the rate of Ordinary Seaman in the Benin operations of 1897, and again, as a Leading Seaman, aboard the Arethusa, during the Boxer Rebellion. Purchasing his discharge as a Petty Officer 2nd Class in April 1903, he joined the Metropolitan Police, but in May 1915 re-enlisted in the Royal Engineers, and went out to France as a Company Quarter-Master Sergeant with the 35th Divisional Signal Company, R.E. in January 1916. In April of the same year he returned to the U.K. and was commissioned as Q.M. and Lieutenant in the 19th (Service) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (2nd Tyneside Pioneers), and was once more embarked for France for service with his unit in the 35th Division - indeed it is likely he arrived there in that July, when the Battalion was employed on the Somme front for eight weeks. In March 1917, however, due to illness, he was admitted to No. 1 New Zealand General Hospital at Amiens and evacuated to the U.K. in the same month, where he was admitted to the Swedish War Hospital at Paddington, London. Sometime thereafter, he was attached to the Royal Air Force, and by the time of his discharge in September 1919, had attained the honorary rank of Captain.