Height: 28cm (11in)
Silver and silver gilt. Finely modelled and chased snuff mull in the form of an 1858 pattern officer’s full dress busby with oval cockade to the front beneath the plume; corded cloth bag to the right side and curb chain to the front. Maker’s mark of Carrington & Co, London. Hallmarked London 1935. Mounted on its original ebonised base applied with silver presentation plaque inscribed ‘Presented to Lieut. R. Dale / 4th (Queen's Own) Hussars / By his brother officers, on his marriage /July 1938'.
Captain Richard Dale, MC, was commissioned into the 4th Hussars shortly before mechanisation in 1936. He served in the Middle East from January 1940, and took part in the Greek campaign of 1941, in which most of the Regiment was taken prisoner following the German airborne assault. With only 12 officers and 160 other ranks returning from Greece, the regiment was reforming in Cairo just as Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps launched its offensive in the Western Desert that pushed British forces back to Egypt. On 21 April 1941, Dale led his troop of Cruiser tanks into the fray, well forward of the infantry rearguard he was co-operating with, and ‘Despite his isolated position, and that enemy aircraft were searching for him continuously, he maintained this position for several hours, enabling our infantry to continue this withdrawal unmolested, and the the skillful handling of his troop destroyed several enemy tanks and a number of riflemen before retiring.’ His subsequent citation for the award of the Military Cross, further remarked upon ‘his cheerfulness, ability and powers of leadership’. Thenceforth and no doubt under the watchful eye of the Colonel of the Regiment, Winston Churchill, the fortunes of the 4th Hussars in North Africa improved incrementally after the heavy fighting at Gazala in May 1942 and in the pivotal Battle of El Alamein in October 1942.