Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Great War ‘Siberian operations’ C.B., C.M.G., C.B.E. group of seven awarded to Brigadier-General Archibald Jack, Royal Engineers, late New Zealand Forces, Commander of the British Railway Mission in Siberia

The Most Honourable Order of The Bath, C.B. (Military) Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G., Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 1st type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1902 (Lieut. A. Jack, N. Zealand M. Rif.) fixed suspension, later impressed naming; British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (Brig. Gen. A. Jack); Japan, Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd Class neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels with cabachon centres, generally good very fine (7) £2500-3000

C.B. London Gazette 14 January 1920: ‘for valuable services rendered in connection with Military Operations in Siberia.’ The only C.B. awarded for these operations.

C.M.G. London Gazette 22 March 1919: ‘for services rendered in connection with Military Operations in the Field.’

C.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919: ‘for valuable services rendered in connection with the War.’

Order of the Rising Sun London Gazette 19 August 1921.

M.I.D. London Gazette 16 January 1919 (South Russia and Roumania), 30 April 1919 (East Russia), and 14 January 1920 (Siberia).

Archibald Jack was born at Hokitika, New Zealand, in 1874, and was educated at Dunedin High School. Employed by the New Zealand Public Works Department from 1893 to 1900, he was commissioned as Lieutenant in the 9th New Zealand Mounted Rifles and took part in the South African War in 1901 with the New Zealand Contingent. Following the war he returned to his profession as an engineer with the railways. He held various appointments including Central South African Railways from 1902-08, the Tientsin-Pakow Railway, China, 1909-10, and the Argentine Railways 1911-16. For his services in China he was awarded the Order of Excellent Service of that country.

Jack rejoined the Army in 1917 as a temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Engineers, becoming Colonel in 1918 and Brigadier-General in 1919. He served during 1918 under Major-General de Condolle in Roumania. When the policy of intervention in Russia came into effect in 1918, he was placed in charge of the British Railway Mission on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The War, the Russian revolution and the Bolshevist movement had created inextricable confusion on the Siberian Line and it was Jack’s task to restore order and reorganize traffic in collaboration with Russian railway engineers and representatives of the other Allied Powers.

When Yekaterinburg was on the point of falling it was Jack who saved the situation. He checked the stampede of rolling stock which a few ‘panic-stricken Generals’ had commandeered and were using to effect their own escape, and carried out the evacuation in an orderly manner. Jack managed to get nearly everything and everyone away in train after train before the Bolsheviks took possession of the town. One correspondent wrote: ‘It may fairly be said that the only aspect of the work of the Allies in Siberia on which it is possible to look back with any degree of satisfaction, is supplied by the activities of the Railway Mission.’

After the War, during which he is supposed to have been torpedoed three times, Jack was appointed general manager of the United Railways of Havana, Cuba, 1920-25. During problems with labour he was stopped in his car one day, by a crowd outside his office. A striker thrust his revolver through the car window and fired at point-blank range. Shot under the eye, the bullet came out at the base of the skull and within a few weeks not a trace of the wound remained. Brigadier-General Archibald Jack died on 29 January 1939. The group is sold with Statutes for the Order of the Bath (1925) and the Order of St Michael and St George (1923), and a vellum bound Order of Service for St Michael’s and St George’s Day (1906).