Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War C.B.E. group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel A. W. Hazel, a General Staff Officer in the Ministry of Interior, Cairo, who was murdered in the uprising of March 1919

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 1st type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col. A. W. Hazel); Egypt, Order of the Nile, 3rd Class neck badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; Turkey, Order of Medjidie, 3rd Class neck badge, gold, silver-gilt, silver and enamel, together with a gold locket with portrait photographs of the recipient as boy and man, and a Royal Artillery tie-pin, in gold and enamel, generally good very fine and better (7) £700-900

C.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

Albert William Hazel, who entered the Egyptian Civil Service on graduating from Hertford College, Oxford, was a long-served Inspector of the Interior who was awarded the 3rd Class of the Turkish Order of Medjidie sometime prior to the Great War.

Granted the local rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the latter conflict, he was awarded the 3rd Class of the Egyptian Order of the Nile for his ‘valuable services’ (London Gazette 29 December 1916 refers), a civil O.B.E. (London Gazette 7 January 1918 refers), a mention in despatches by General Allenby (London Gazette 16 January 1918 refers), and, finally, in June 1919, the C.B.E., this latter most probably in connection with his services as an Inspector of Recruiting.

Be that as it may, Hazel was no longer around to enjoy the latter appointment, having been murdered near Deirut on 24 March 1919, just a few days after several Europeans met a similar fate at the local railway station - the whole as a result of a violent uprising that resulted in death or injury to some 75 British citizens in the Spring and Summer of that year. He is believed to have been shot.

The Colonel, who was aged 42 years, left a widow, Marie Sophia of Oaken, Wolverhampton. He is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery.