Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The historically important Great War Victory Medal awarded to Colonel T. Sinclair, Army Medical Service, who personally conducted the first post-mortem examination of Baron Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen in a hanger of No. 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, just hours after he was extricated from the wreckage of his red triplane, near Corbie, on 21 April 1918

Having analysed the pathway of a single .303 bullet through the Baron’s torso using a rudimentary piece of wire, it was Sinclair’s report which gave considerable weight to the argument that the fatal shot came from a trailing aircraft, rather than the ground - thus, the Canadian Pilot, Captain A. R. Brown, was officially credited with the ‘kill’ shortly after receiving a Bar to his D.S.C.

Victory Medal 1914-19, with copy M.I.D. oak leaves (Col. T. Sinclair.) mounted on contemporary wearing pin, better than very fine
£500-£700

‘Copy extracts from A. H. File No. 21/13/506
In the Field 22nd April 1918.
We have made a surface examination of Captain Baron von Richthofen and find there are only the entrance and exit wounds of one rifle bullet on the trunk. The entrance wound is on the right side about the level of the ninth-rib, which is fractured, just in front of the posterior axillary line. The bullet appears to have passed obliquely backwards through the chest striking the spinal column, from which it glanced in a forward direction and issued on the left side of the chest, at a level about two inches higher than its entrance on the right and about in the anterior axillary line.
There was also a compound fracture of the lower jaw on the left side, apparently not caused by a missile – and also some minor bruises of the head and face.
The body was not opened – these facts were ascertained by probing from the surface wounds.’
Thomas Sinclair, Colonel AMS, Consulting Surgeon IV Army, B.E.F.

Thomas Sinclair was born in Belfast in 1858. Credited by the Ballymena Weekly Telegraph as ‘one of the most outstanding Ulstermen of his generation’, Sinclair graduated with distinction from the Royal University of Ireland and became Professor of Surgery at Queen’s University in 1886. Appointed surgeon to the Royal Victoria Hospital and consulting surgeon to the Ulster Hospital for Children, the Forster Green Hospital, and the County Antrim Infirmary, Sinclair spent the next thirty years training a generation of medical students in the art of surgery - indeed, under his tutelage, the Belfast School of Modern Surgery came to be regarded as one of the most advanced in the British Isles.

Volunteering for active service at the outbreak of hostilities, Sinclair served as Colonel in Egypt from 15 November 1915, before being transferred to the Western Front as Consulting Surgeon to the Fourth Army, which at that time was commanded by that other distinguished Ulsterman, Lord Rawlinson. Decorated with the C.B., ‘in recognition of work well and faithfully done on various fighting fronts’, Sinclair was further Mentioned in Despatches on 4 January 1917 whilst serving as Consultant. However, quite by accident and pure circumstance, it was from Headquarters on a sunny spring day in 1918 that Sinclair received the order to proceed immediately to a small hangar at Poulainville aerodrome on the Somme; awaiting his inspection lay the body of one of the most dangerous foes of the Great War.

Controversy remains to this day as to who exactly fired the fatal shot which killed the Red Baron. During the autopsy it was noted that Sinclair used a piece of wire, rumoured to be fence wire, to track the path of the bullet, rather than a more appropriate smooth and rounded apparatus. Such a crude improvisation laid open the opportunity for error and inaccuracy, but it is widely accepted that this first report remains the most important piece of evidence to this day which addresses the circumstances of death and factual wounds, more-so given that the infamous red Fokker Dr.I. 425/17 triplane was scavenged within hours for souvenirs. Sinclair’s conclusions however, remain contested, especially following recent analysis of the path of the machine gun bullets fired from the trenches by Sergeant Cedric Popkin of the 24th M.G.C., 1st Australian Imperial Force.

Elected to the Ulster Senate representing Queen’s in 1921, Sinclair was later honoured as Founder of the Modern Ulster School of Surgery and is remembered via a large and impressive oil portrait by George Harcourt, R.A., which hangs to this day in the Great Hall of Queen’s University, Belfast. His acceptance speech was particularly humbling:
‘What a sustaining and consoling thought it is to me that so many warm friends consider that I have not altogether lived in vain, but have been enabled in some degree to alleviate or assuage the heavy burden of human suffering throughout the years.’

Sinclair died of illness on 5 November 1940.