Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A post-War ‘Civil Division’ O.B.E. pair awarded to Lieutenant J. C. O’Dwyer, Indian Army Reserve of Officers, later H.M. Consul-General, Berlin, whose Consular career saw him serving in Munich in the lead-up to the Second World War, and in San Francisco at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the War

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Civil) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge, silver-gilt; India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919 (Lt. J. C. O’Dwyer, I.A.R.O.) good very fine (2) £260-£300

Roger Perkins Collection, Sotheby’s, December 1990.

O.B.E. London Gazette 13 June 1959.

John Chevalier O’Dwyer was born was born on 15 September 1900, the son of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Governor of the Punjab (who was murdered in 1940 by the revolutionist Udham Singh as a reprisal for the Amritsar massacre of 13 April 1919 in which an estimated 1,000 protesters were shot dead, Udham Singh being one of the survivors), and was educated at Downside School and Clongowes College, County Kildare. Travelling to India to see his parents and arrived in Lahore in December 1918, he was commissioned into the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, and served during the Third Afghan War on attachment to the 31st Duke of Connaughts Own Lancers and took part in the Third Afghan War of 1919. Returning to England he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, and after taking his degree joined the Levant Consular Service, the branch of the Foreign Office dealing with the Middle East, in 1923. Over the next five years he worked almost exclusively in Persia being appointed Vice Consul and Acting Consul in Tehran, Shiraz, Ahwaz, Meshed, Kermanshah and Basra.

Contracting Pulomary Tuberculosis in 1931, O’Dwyer became very ill and in October 1931 left Basra by sea and travelled directly to Germany where he was treated at a Bavarian Mountain Sanatorium. On his recovery, he transferred to the General Consular Service and stayed in Germany initially as His Majesty’s Vice Consul in Frankfurt, before transferring to the very heart of the political scene by being appointed Vice Consul in Munich in 1936. He left Germany in May 1938 and was appointed first Vice Consul then Consul in San Francisco, California, United States of America. Promoted Consul General following America’s declaration of war on Japan following the attack at Pearl Harbor, he represented H.M. Government on all non-military matters on the western seaboard. Returning to London in 1943, he spent a year at the Foreign Office before returning to the Pacific, this time Hawaii, upon his appointment as Consul in Honolulu. Following the surrender of Japan, he was involved in the preparation of pre-trial documents for the war crimes tribunals.

In 1950 O’Dwyer was appointed to Tokyo as Consul in time for the outbreak of the Korean War and later moved to Yokohama as Consul General. He returned to the Foreign Office in London in 1952 at the height of the Cold War remaining there until 1956 when he was appointed Consul General in Berlin, a post he held until his retirement in 1959. Appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on his retirement, he died in 1978 and is buried near his father in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.

Sold with a photographic image of the recipient presenting the C.B.E. to Lieutenant-General E. Hull, U.S. Army, whilst British Consul in Honolulu; and copied research.