Rathbone's medals


Someone told me that the medals Rathbone wears in this movie are the actual ribbons he won while in World War I. Does anyone know if that's really true?
AJV

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I just did a quick Wiki check and found only that Rathbone, "Fought in the British army during World War I, and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery under fire." David Niven in either Bring On The Empty Horses or The Moon's A balloon wrote that one of the incidents involving the character he portrayed in The Dawn Patrol is fact-based. A British officer shot down and presumed dead did
unexpectedly return to his squadron dressed only in his pajamas carrying a bottle of champagne. Niven wrote that he met the officer who told him he still had the pajamas.

A piece of Rathbone military trivia I came across was that he was "Distant cousin of Maj. Henry Rathbone, who was part of President Abraham Lincoln's theater party the night Lincoln was assassinated. Maj. Rathbone himself was stabbed by John Wilkes Booth as the latter was escaping, but the wound was not fatal. Maj. Rathbone later married Clara Harris, who was also in the Lincoln party, but he murdered her in a jealous rage in 1875 and spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum."


Mike

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[deleted]

Philip St John Basil Rathbone joined up as a Private Soldier in the London Regiment, but was commissioned as a junior officer in the Liverpool Regiment of the British Army during WW1. He was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal (known as “Mutt and Jeff”) and a MC for gallantry.

This is the citation for Basil’s Military Cross (MC) “For conspicuous daring and resource on patrol. On one occasion, while inside the hostile wire, he came face to face with one of the enemy, who he at once shot. This raised the alarm, and an intense fire was opened, but he crept through the entanglements with his three men and got safely back. The result of his patrolling was a thorough knowledge of the locality and strength of all enemy posts in the vicinity”. (London Gazette 7th November 1918.)

He did not apply for his medals until 1930 which are recorded as being sent to “527, North Camden Drive, Beverley Hills, Ca."

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