Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Captain H. M. Pope, Royal Army Medical Corps, attached Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who suffered a severe gunshot wound to the head on the first day of the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915

1914 Star (Lieut: H. M. Pope. R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. H. M. Pope.) very fine (3) £140-£180

Herbert Montague Pope was born in West Malling, Kent, in 1885, the son of surgeon and general practitioner Herbert Francis Montague Pope. Educated at the University of Oxford, Pope is recorded in 1913 as house surgeon at the Burton Infirmary, Staffordshire. He was subsequently appointed to a commission as Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps 17 September 1914, serving in France at No. 11 General Field Hospital from 16 October 1914. Transferred to the 22nd Field Ambulance, Pope was detailed as Medical Officer to the 1st Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers from 8 August 1915; posted to Loos, he received a bullet wound to the vault of his skull which resulted in a number of outward fractures.

Evacuated to the Red Cross Hospital at Rouen, he was sent home to England suffering from ‘complete paralysis of the right hand and forearm’. Pope remained in England on light duties for the next eighteen months before being detailed to India; he returned due to sickness in early 1918 and relinquished his commission shortly thereafter.

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