Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria. Including a superb collection of medals to the King’s German Legion, Police Medals from the Collection of John Tamplin and a small collection of medals to the Irish Guards

Five: Lieutenant D. D. Booth, The Gordon Highlanders, onetime attached to the 4th Nigeria Regiment and afterwards a Private in the Malay States Volunteer Rifles

1914-15 Star (1763 Pte., Gord. Highrs.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lieut.); Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Nigeria 1918 (Lieut., Gordons); Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service, G.V.R. (Pte., M.S.V.R.) edge bruising, contact marks and polished, otherwise generally about very fine and rare (5) £500-600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals to The Gordon Highlanders and Associated Units from the Collection of A.J. Henderson.

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Douglas Duncan Booth was born about 1894 at Countesswells, Aberdeen and commenced studying agriculture at Aberdeen University in 1913. Enrolling in ‘U’ Company, the University Company of the 4th Gordons, in April 1914, he was mobilised with his unit on the outbreak of hostilities.

In February 1915 the Battalion was sent to the Front and on 27 August Booth was wounded by a gunshot wound to his leg and was evacuated to England a few days later. By September 1915 he had rejoined his unit but he was again wounded on the 25th of that month, in the Battle of Hooge, this time by shrapnel in the left leg and buttocks, and in the right temple, ‘while in a charge’. Once more evacuated home, he was operated on at Aberdeen, fragments of shrapnel being removed from his left leg and right temple.

Commissioned into the 6th Gordons in August 1916, Booth joined his new Battalion at the Front in the following month, but yet again, on the 6 November, fell victim to enemy fire, picking up a gunshot wound in one of his hands, in addition to barbed wire lacerations. This time, however, he was not evacuated home, but by March 1917 his old wounds from Hooge necessitated just such action, an abcess having developed on his left buttock, the one area that had not been operated on back in 1915.

On recovery Booth was sent to West Africa on attachment to the 4th Battalion of the Nigeria Regiment, and participated in the expedition against the Egba tribe in the Summer of 1918, subsequently receiving one of just three Africa General Service Medals with ‘Nigeria 1918’ clasp to be awarded to the Gordons - his was the only one to an Officer.

Booth was eventually demobilised back in the U.K. in July 1919 and went to Malaya, where he enrolled in the Malay States Volunteer Rifles as a Private. And in June 1932 he was awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service Medal (Federated Malay States Government Gazette refers).