Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War Mesopotamia operations O.B.E. pair awarded to Quarter-Master & Major D. C. Baxter, Royal Army Medical Corps

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Military) Officer’s 1st type breast badge, hallmarks for London 1917; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Iraq, M.I.D. oak leaf (Q.M. & Capt. D. C. Baxter), good very fine (2) £200-250

O.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

David Charles Baxter, a Yorkshireman who was born in May 1879, enlisted in the Medical Staff Corps in July 1897, shortly before the formation of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Having then witnessed active service out in South Africa in 1900, he was advanced to Sergeant-Major on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, and was commissioned as a Quarter-Master & Hon. Lieutenant in May 1915, in which latter month he was embarked for France. But his subsequent award of the O.B.E. was in respect of his services as C.O. of 33rd Advanced Depot, Medical Stores, Basra, Mesopotamia; so, too, his mention in despatches (London Gazette 10 July 1919 refers). Actively employed in the Iraq operations of 1919-20, he was advanced to Quarter-Master & Major in May 1930 and placed on the Retired List in May 1934, although he returned to uniform in the 1939-45 War; sold with copied obituary, with tribute from Major-General J. J. Magner and portrait photograph.