Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine Great War M.C. group of five awarded to Captain A. R. Thomson, 7th Rajputs, who, having been decorated for leading three bayonet charges, was wounded in the battle of Ctesiphon and taken P.O.W. at Kut

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; 1914-15 Star (Lt. A. R. Thomson, 7/Rajputs); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak palm (Capt. A. R. Thomson); Jubilee 1935, together with a set of related dress miniature medals (excluding the Jubilee Medal), mounted court-style as worn and the whole contained in an old Spink & Son leather case, the fourth with re-impressed naming in large capitals, good very fine (9) £1000-1200

M.C. London Gazette 29 October 1915.

Alister Ralph Thomson was born in Ambala, India in October 1886, the son of Surgeon Colonel Sir George Thomson, K.C.B., Indian Medical Service, and was educated at Dulwich College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in May 1906, he entered the Indian Army with an appointment in the 7th Rajputs in the following year and was advanced to Lieutenant in November 1908.

He subsequently witnessed active service in Mesopotamia during the Great War, in the period November 1914 to April 1916, and was awarded the M.C. and twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 5 April and 19 October 1916 refer).

The 7th Rajputs were embarked for the Tigris in early November 1914, and quickly went into action, not least in support of the operations at Qurna on 6-8 December, where ‘the ground was as smooth as a billiard table, and the enemy’s trenches were so well sited as to be completely invisible’.

But it was for his gallantry on 3 March 1915 that Thomson won his M.C., when the Rajputs launched an attack against Turkish positions near Ahwaz - ‘it was a bright moonlight night, and surprise, essential to success, was out of the question’. In fact, as Rawlinson’s History of the 3/7th Rajput Regiment goes on to state, ‘From the first everything went wrong’, and, but for the gallant stand of the 7th Rajputs, it would have amounted to a major disaster. For his own part, ‘Lieutenant Thomson, who was acting as Brigade Signalling Officer, received the Military Cross for rallying a party of men and leading three bayonet charges’ (Rawlinson’s history refers).

Thomson next saw action at Shaiba on 13 April, while commanding the machine-gun section, and thereafter shared in his regiment’s trials and tribulations in the advance on Baghdad, being present at the capture of Amara, the battles of El-Sinn and Ctesiphon. On the latter occasion, at the height of the engagement, he endeavoured to collect fresh ammunition, but was wounded in the process - ‘he wished to carry on, but was sent to the ambulance’. He did, however, return to regimental employ in time for the siege of Kut, where he was taken P.O.W. in April 1916.

Post-war, Thomson served as a Brigade Major in Iraq from August 1921 to July 1922, and, on attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in August 1931, was appointed to the command of the 3/7th Rajputs, in which capacity he remained employed until August 1935. Having then been placed on the Retired List, Thomson served as a Staff Captain at the Ministry of Supply during the 1939-45 War. He died in Barnstaple in 1954; sold with an original portrait photograph and photocopied research.