British War Medal 1914-20 : Captain R F Hughes, 1 Field Ambulance, Australian Army Medical Corps, AIF

British War Medal 1914-20. Impressed around edge with recipient's details.

Part of a collection of British and foreign war medals and commemorative medallions and plaques assembled by the Honourable Sir Thomas Hughes MLC. This medal, and its companion, RELAWM14871, relates to the service of Sir Thomas' son, 26 year old Captain Roger Forrest Hughes, a doctor with 1 Field Ambulance, Australian Army Medical Corps, who died of wounds received on 11 December 1916. His brother, Captain (later Group Captain) Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, of 10 Squadron Royal Flying Corps, recorded of the event: 'He was in 1st Field Ambulance A.A.M.C. and had only been in France for about 5 days when he was fatally wounded by a shell which burst in the Advanced Dressing Station at Bull Trench, near Flers while he was attending to a wounded man. He died at 36 Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly that night and is buried at Heilly Cemetery. I had heard he had arrived in France and journeyed by a car that was going from my unit, which was many miles north at Choques near Bethune, and actually arrived at Heilly shortly before he died and he was able to recognise me. I had no idea when I left the squadron of his actual whereabouts and merely took the chance of visiting 1st Division Headquarters at Heilly in the hope of finding out where his unit was so that I might be able to visit him later, not having seen him since I left Australia in March 1916. It was a most amazing thing that knowing nothing of his whereabouts or of the fact that he had been wounded I should actually arrive in the village where he was dying.'