Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A scarce Victory Medal awarded to Private R. F. Vanderplank, Royal Army Medical Corps, late Non Combatant Corps, a ‘conscientious objector’ who put faith at the forefront of his decision making and served his country through hard manual labour and assisting the sick and wounded

Victory Medal 1914-19 (144286 Pte. R. F. Vanderplank. R.A.M.C.) nearly very fine £60-£80

Robert Frank Vanderplank was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, on 21 January 1878. A joiner and carpenter by trade, his Army Service Record records him living with his wife at 27 Quentin Street, Cardiff, and worshipping as an active member of the Plymouth Brethren.

According to historian Elisabeth Wilson in The Eyes of the Authorities are Upon Us: The Brethren and World War I, the outbreak of the Great War ‘took the Brethren by surprise, and forced many of them to examine their views on the state afresh... There was private agonising over decisions, and some public debate and disagreement.’ Alongside Quakers, Christadelphians and Jehovah’s Witnesses, many refused to take up arms, and this in turn resulted in a large number of military tribunals; those who found enlistment acceptable were soon deployed as stretcher bearers and despatch riders, but those who refused to co-operate or faced unsympathetic magistrates were swiftly and harshly dealt with. Wilson notes, ‘there were usually forty or fifty brethren from Open assemblies in Dartmoor (prison) at any one time.’

Keeping strongly to his core belief, ‘thy shalt not kill’, Vanderplank obtained exemption from carrying arms on 2 August 1916. Appointed Private in the recently created Non Combatant Corps, he witnessed home service with No. 5 (Northern) Company and No. 6 (Western) Company, before requesting transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps on 9 July 1918. Sent to Blackpool for training, he crossed from Southampton to Havre on 7 November 1918 and witnessed the final days of the war attached to 1/1 Northumbrian Field Ambulance.