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

A good Great War M.C. group of nine awarded to Major H. C. N. Hill, Welsh Guards, late Northern Rhodesia Rifles, who was a District Commissioner in Northern Rhodesia between the Wars

Military Cross, G.V.R.; 1914-15 Star (8 Pte., N. Rhodesian R.); British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut.); 1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals; Jubilee 1935, mounted as worn, very fine or better (9) £600-800

M.C. London Gazette 2 December 1918: ‘This Officer took over command of a company ten minutes before the attack. Throughout the whole advance he showed the greatest coolness and grasp of the situation. When a readjustment of the line became necessary he organised it with the utmost skill, after having collected all his wounded, which was done under heavy machine-gun fire. The small number of casualties suffered by his company was due to his gallantry and fine example.’

Hugh Charles Norwood Hill was born in Buenos Aires in January 1890 and was educated at Dulwich College. Joining the Colonial Service in the course of 1912, he was posted to Northern Rhodesia, and on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he enlisted in the Northern Rhodesia Rifles and served in the German East Africa campaign. On the disbandment of his unit in 1916, Hill returned briefly to his post in the Colonial Service, but in the following year he returned to the U.K. and enlisted in the Household Brigade Officer Cadet Battalion at Bushey Hall. Commissioned into the Welsh Guards in October 1917, he went on to serve with distinction in France with the 1st Battalion from March 1918 until the end of hostilities.

Returning to Northern Rhodesia after the War, Hill rose to be a District Commissioner and Acting Provincial Commissioner, prior to transferring to his final appointment as the Administrator of the Turks and Calib Islands in the mid-1930s, which latter post earned him the Jubilee 1935 Medal. During his time in Rhodesia, Hill was responsible for clearing a landing strip for Sir Alan Cobham to land his aircraft during a survey flight from London to Cape Town, and had his fair share of colonial experiences. When he got married, he and his wife had to walk 300 miles from Lusaka to Broken Hill, Abercom, since no roads existed; and while stationed at Mporokoso, a lion tore to ribbons the kanzus of his houseboys which had been left hanging in an open nsaka - the next night the lion returned and chewed up the sand box and seat of the earth closet on the verandah of his house, but on its third visit it was rounded up and shot (details of further entertaining stories accompany the Lot).

Hill was re-commissioned into the Welsh Guards in March 1940 and after carrying out assorted staff duties in London and Northern Ireland, he served in North West Europe operations from September 1944 until June 1945. Demobilised in the rank of Major, he retired to his old hunting ground in Northern Rhodesia.