Orders, Decorations and Medals

INDIA GENERAL SERVICE 1895-1902, 3 clasps, Punjab Frontier 1897-98, Malakand 1897, Tirah 1897-98 (Mr. A. Rehill, Inspr. Post Offices) naming officially re-engraved as issued, sold with original portrait photograph, light contact marks, otherwise good very fine and rare

Alec Owen Rehill joined the Postal Department in November 1892 and, after initial training at a main Provincial office, was appointed Clerk at Simla. He became temporary Sub Postmaster At Dalhousie in 1895 and Sub Postmaster at Dagshai in 1896. A year later he was posted to Malakand with the same title. Rehill received an allowance in addition to his fixed salary during his time at Dagshai and Malakand, reflecting the hazards and discomforts of working in a military operational area. It is almost certain that he will have had frequent dealings with Winston Churchill during the Malakand campaign as Churchill was sending home a large volume of letters and reports to his mother, and to his political mentors in England. Alec Rehill became Sub Postmaster at Kasauli in April 1898 and retired from the Postal Department the following year. He had decided to join his elder brother John in the Punjab Police and was accepted for training as an Inspector 4th grade at the Police Training School at Phillaur. After only a few weeks at Phillaur he contracted chronic intestinal nephritis and died there on 9th September 1899. His brother, John Ferguson Rehill, went on to become senior police officer at Amritsar and was heavily censured by the Hunter Committee which investigated the massacre there in 1919.