Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Captain H. C. Colyer, Royal Army Medical Corps, who served on the Western Front from 6 November 1914, having been specially selected as one of the first six dental surgeons to serve during the Great War in a professional capacity

1914 Star (Lieut: H. C. Colyer. R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. H. C. Colyer) extremely fine (3) £360-£440

Horace Charles Colyer, a Dentist from Guildford, Surrey, was born in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in 1884. He was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps on 1 November 1914 for service during the Great War, serving on the Western Front from 6 November 1914. Ten days later the British Dental Journal reported that ‘six dental practitioners have been specially appointed to the Royal Army Medical Corps, and have gone to France as dentists, with the rank of temporary Lieutenants to the regular forces. Thus, should future developments justify it, the nucleus of a special Dental Corps is already in being.’ The six chosen were Claude Gray Colyer, LDS RDC Eng (1910), his brother Horace Charles Colyer, LDS RDS Eng (1905), Stanley Alfred Riddett, LDS RCS Eng (1908), Charles Weller, LDS RCS Eng (1905), Frederick William Broderick, LDS RCS Eng (1912) and George Gilbert Timpson, LDS RCS Eng (1905).

In 1917 the recipient was wounded as a consequence of gas and is afterwards noted as having transferred to medical duties with the Royal Flying Corps. Post war, the extent of his injuries from gas affected his eyesight to the point that he realised that he could no longer work in general practice. Accordingly his career changed direction with him afterwards working as a Dental Radiologist. Early in the Second War, his home and business in Croydon was destroyed by a landmine during the Blitz, but he thankfully escaped unscathed. He died in Croydon, aged 63, on 26 March 1947.

Sold with copied Medal Index Card, copied London Gazette commission entry, copied obituary for the recipient published in the British Medical Journal on 3 May 1947 and copied article ‘The first dentists sent to the Western Front during the First World War, by Fiona Gray, published in the British Dental Journal on 9 June 2017.