Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Volunteer Force Long Service (India & the Colonies), G.V.R. (2-Lt. C. H. Webster, B. & N. W. Ry. Bn., A.F.I.), officially impressed naming, minor official correction to unit and one or two edge bruises, otherwise good very fine £60-80

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Long Service Medals from the Collection formed by John Tamplin.

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Bengal & North-Western Railway Battalion

Cyril Heathcock Webster was born in April 1890, quite possibly in India, for he was fluent in Hindi and Urdu, and made his first appearance in Thacker’s Indian Directory in 1914, when listed as a Probationary Deputy Collector at Meerut. Moving to Dehra Dun in 1918, to Chakrata as a Cantonment Magistrate in 1919, and to Azamgarh as a J.P. and Deputy Collector in 1920, thereafter Webster was involved in the Opium trade. Thus his subsequent appointments as Assistant Opium Agent at Azamgarh in 1920, Officiating Sub.-Deputy Opium Agent at Farrukhabad in 1922, District Opium Agent Officer at Partabgarh in 1927, District Opium Agent at Ghazipur in 1933, Factory Superintendent of the Opium Agent at Ghazipur in 1937, and finally District Opium Officer at Shahjahanpur in 1940

He was also a keen member of the Indian Volunteers, originally having been commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th Mussoorie Battalion in March 1918. During the Great War he was appointed a Divisional Recruiting Officer in Lucknow in July 1918, and in May of the following year joined the strength of the Bengal & North-Western Railway Battalion. Webster, who was advanced to Captain on the Indian Army Reserve of Officers in September 1923, was awarded his Indian Volunteer Force Long Service Medal in IAO 356 of 14 June 1932; sold with related research.