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Auction: 19002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 59

A scarce Africa General Service Medal awarded to Volunteer G. E. Thompson, Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve

Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Nyasaland 1915 (G. Thompson), good very fine

Godfrey Eden Thompson enlisted as a civilian volunteer in the Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve (N.V.R.) in December 1914 and was actively employed in the operations of January-February 1915 (Medal & clasp).

A member of the Mikalongwe Section, under the command of H. V. Petherbridge, he participated in patrol work and was witness to the capture of John Gray, a follower of the rebel leader John Nkologo Chilombwe; accompanying copied Colonial Office reports, refer.

Chilombwe's rebels - members of the Watch Tower Sect - launched their rebellion on 23 January 1915, an early European victim being Mr. W. J. Livingstone, who was beheaded in front of his wife. Reprisals were swift, many captured rebels being shot on capture. And of the 119 rebels brought to trial, 108 were convicted of high treason, murder, conspiracy to murder or unlawful assembly; they were either executed or flogged and jailed, with hard labour.

Formally enrolled in the ranks of the N.V.R. in March 1916, Thompson was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Nyasaland Field Force in November 1917 and advanced to Lieutenant in May 1918. He subsequently appears to have been mentioned in a despatch dated 2 August 1918, whilst serving at Fort Jameson in Northern Rhodesia.

Having relinquished his commission in September 1919 and settled in Blantyre, Thompson applied for a gun licence for game hunting in the same month; sold with an extensive file of copied reports and research.


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Sold for
£290