Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War campaign group of three awarded to Lieutenant G. N. B. Swinley, who was killed in action in the Ypres salient in June 1915

1914-15 Star (Lieut. G. N. B. Swinley, K.O. Sco. Bord.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. G. N. B. Swinley), contained in an old glazed display case, good very fine (3) £300-350

Gordon Noel Balfour Swinley was born in Assam, India in July 1890, the son of Gordon and Margaret Swinley, and a grandson of Major-General George Swinley, Bengal Artillery (see Lot 878), and was educated at Clifton College and the United Services College. Having worked in London for a year or two, he went out to India, but had to return home as a result of ill-health, a period that also witnessed him taking passage in the ill-fated P. & O. liner Delhi in November 1911, when, with the Duke and Duchess of Fife (the Princess Royal), and their two daughters, among passengers, she was wrecked off the North Africa coast.

By the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Swinley was the Acting British Vice-Consul in Marrakesh, but quickly returned home to enlist as a Trooper in 2nd King Edward’s Horse. Granted a commission in the 3rd Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers that December, he went out to France in May of the following year, and was killed in action in the Ypres salient on 23 June 1915, while attached to the 2nd Battalion. Described as ‘the most popular officer in the Regiment, as much with seniors as with juniors’, 24 year old Swinley was buried in the grounds of Lankhof Chateau, but his remains were subsequently re-interred in the New Irish Farm Cemetery, Belgium, after the War.