An extremely rare Boxer Rebellion and Great War group of three awarded to 2nd Corporal A. T. P. Lydamore, Royal Engineers, who served in the 4th Balloon Section, R.E. in China 1900-01

China 1900, 1 clasp, Relief of Pekin, this a copy and not entitled (749 Sapr., R.E.), single initial ‘A.’; British War and Victory Medals (170284 Spr., R.E.), mounted as worn, the first somewhat polished, nearly very fine and better (3)
£600-800

Arthur Thomas P. Lydamore was born at Turnchapel, Plymouth in 1881 and enlisted in the Royal Engineers as a boy recruit at Norwich in February 1897. Appointed a Sapper in August 1899, he joined the 4th Balloon Section, R.E. in North China in August 1900, where he served until June 1901, and qualified for the China Medal 1900, without clasp, one of just 80 such awards to his unit - the original roll signed by Lieutenant T. E. Martin-Leake, R.E. at Aldershot, in May 1902, confirms. Commanded by Major J. R. L. MacDonald, and afterwards by Captain A. H. B. Hume, 4th Balloon Section carried out some favourable ascents, equipment comparing favourably with other nations similarly inclined. And according to an entry on one of Lydamore’s pay sheets, he was still serving as a “Balloonist” at Aldershot in June 1905, so he may have been around at the time of the demise of his old Boxer Rebellion comrade, Lieutenant T. E. Martin-Leake, who was drowned after his balloon came down in the sea off Dorset in May 1907 - the only free-ballooning fatality apparently suffered by the R.E.’s air branch. Martin-Leake’s brother, Arthur, notably won the Victoria Cross in the Boer War and a Bar to the Victoria Cross in 1914.

Lydamore re-enlisted in his old corps in December 1915, was mobilised in May of the following year, and transferred to the Army Reserve in April 1919; sold with his original Soldier’s Accounts & Pay Book, in original leather binding, with entries signed by the likes of MacDonald, Hume and Martin-Leake, together with his Great War transfer to the reserve document, and a copy of Brigadier P. W. L. Broke-Smith’s History of Early British Aeronautics.