Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War M.C. group of four awarded to Captain E. J. Dickinson, Canadian Army Medical Corps, attached to the 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; British War and Victory Medals (Capt. E. J. Dickinson); France, Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, with star riband fitment, together with the recipient’s Canadian Memorial Cross, G.V.R., the reverse officially inscribed, ‘Capt. E. J. Dickinson, M.C.’, good very fine or better (5) £600-700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the Canadian Expeditonary Force 1914-1918.

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M.C. London Gazette 7 November 1918:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He attended to the wounded, both our own and those of the Allies, in a first-aid post close to the enemy lines under heavy fire and aircraft attacks. On two occasions enemy aircraft flying very low fired into the post, breaking the medicine bottles and causing casualties. He behaved with great coolness and courage, inspiring the men around him and keeping up the spirits of the wounded by his example.’

Elmer John Dickinson, who was born in Huntingdon, Quebec, in June 1887, was practising medicine in Manitoba at the time of his enlistment in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in May 1916.

Appointed a Captain in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, he served in England until going out to France with an appointment in No. 2 Stationary Hospital in January 1918. But it was for his subsequent gallantry on attachment to 1st Motor Machine Gun Brigade, from July 1918, that he was awarded his M.C. and the French Croix de Guerre (London Gazette 7 January 1919 refers).

Dickinson was twice gassed in the Mons sector in November 1918, as a result of which he was hospitalised in England until April 1919, but he never fully recovered, and died in South Africa in April 1924, where he had moved to enjoy the benefits of the climate; sold with copied service record and confirmation of the application for his Memorial Cross by his widow in July 1924.