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Auction: 23002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 106

The very fine Great War Albert Medal awarded to Second-Lieutenant T.J. Dickson, Yorkshire Regiment, for saving the life of a soldier who dropped a live grenade during training at Catterick Camp

Albert Medal, 2nd Class, for Gallantry in Saving Life on Land, bronze and enamel, the reverse officially engraved: 'Presented by His Majesty to 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Johnstone Dickson, Yorkshire Regiment, For Gallantry in Saving Life at Catterick on the 26th June 1917.', nearly extremely fine, in its slightly damaged original fitted red leather case

A.M. London Gazette 4 January 1918:

'On the 26th June, 1917, Lieutenant (then Second Lieutenant) Dickson was instructing a man in throwing live bombs. One of the bombs failed to clear the parapet and fell back into the breastwork. Lieutenant Dickson told the man to run to safety, and himself did so. On reaching the shelter he found that the man had not followed. He at once ran back into the breastwork, and saw the man crouching in a corner on the far side of the bomb. He ran past the bomb, seized the man, and dragged him back past the bomb into safety just before the bomb exploded. Had not Lieutenant Dickson deliberately returned into the danger zone, the man would almost certainly have been killed.'

Thomas Johnstone Dickson was born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire in June 1893, eldest son of Mr. T.J. Dickson of 'Dickson and Benson Ltd.'; upon leaving school Dickson junior became a draper's assistant in Marton, North Yorkshire. A member of The Yorkshire Hussars Yeomanry, he was commissioned Second Lieutenant on 7 December 1915 into Alexandra, Princess of Wales's Own (Yorkshire Regiment) and went to France 1916, where he joined the 1/4th Battalion (along with six other officers) on 31 July. Wounded on 22 September of that year, it is likely he was sent home to recover and from then was appointed to a training post at Catterick Camp - the scene of his brush with death in 1917. When one of his young recruits fumbled a live grenade during throwing practice, Dickson not only saved the man's life but went back into the area of greatest danger in order to do so - an act of immense physical and moral courage. Rightly feted in newspaper reports and articles (with titles such as 'Northern Heroes'), Dickson appears to have spent the remainder of the war in the U.K.

Returning to civilian life, in 1923 he married Edna Meredith and they went on to have six children - this union, however, ended in divorce and he married for a second time in 1940. During the Second World War he was appointed a Second-Lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps (London Gazette, 19 September 1941, p.5408, refers) and promoted Lieutenant in February 1943. On 6 August 1945, whilst still in service, Lieutenant Thomas Johnstone Dickson died aged 52, and is commemorated with a Commonwealth War Graves headstone in Radcliffe-on-Trent cemetery.

Sold with an original framed Post Office telegram, dated 3 April 1918, requiring Dickson: 'to attend at Buckingham Palace at 10am on 6th April to receive Albert Medal', and a comprehensive file of copied research.

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Sold for
£6,500

Starting price
£4000