Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An Inter-War R.R.C. group of five awarded to Lady Superintendent Ethel Green, Queen Alexandra’s Military Nursing Service for India

Royal Red Cross, 1st Class (R.R.C.), G.V.R., silver-gilt, gold, and enamel, on lady’s bow riband; 1914-15 Star (Sister E. Green. Q.A.M.N.S.I.); British War and Victory Medals (Sister E. Green.); Jubilee 1935, unnamed as issued; together with the recipient’s Charing Cross Hospital Medal, bronze, unnamed, good very fine (6) £700-£900

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Norman Gooding Collection.

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Christie’s, July 1984.

R.R.C. London Gazette 1 January 1936.

M.I.D. London Gazettes 15 August 1918 and 2 November 1918.

Ethel Green was born in Cheltenham on 15 May 1883. Educated at Manchester High School and Cricklewood Ladies College, she trained for her nursing certificate at Charing Cross Hospital in London from 1 September 1905 to 12 October 1909. She applied to join the Q.A.M.N.S.I. on 27 February 1911 and was soon accepted pending a vacancy; taking temporary appointment in Birmingham, she finally sailed for India aboard the City of Marseilles on 15 February 1913.

Initially serving as Nursing Sister at Poona and Peshawar, Green was transferred to Mesopotamia in 1916. Here she was twice Mentioned in Despatches, being further notified of the award of the A.R.R.C. in the London Gazette of 25 February 1918. This was later forwarded to the Sister’s Quarters of British Stationary Hospital, Poona, on 3 January 1922. Promoted Lady Superintendent on 18 June 1932, Green witnessed her final posting at the hill station of Dalhousie, a summer retreat of the Earl of Dalhousie, who was once British Governor-General in India. Confirmed as entitled to the Silver Jubilee Medal, she retired from the service on 31 August 1935 and was awarded the R.R.C. soon thereafter. It was also at around this time that she applied for her BWM and VM, thus accounting for the error in rank where ‘Sister’ is substituted for the correct ‘Nursing Sister’.