Rare medals of a one-time chief medical officer of Sittingbourne are to go under the hammer.

The three decorations, still in their boxes and valued at up to £3,000, belonged to Colonel Walter Hugh Crichton who also helped set up the Indian Medical Service.

They are to be sold by T and T Auctions in Tunbridge Wells on Tuesday and have an estimated value of £2,700 to £2,970.

Colonel Crichton was the director of public health in Bihar, India, from 1945 until the end of British rule in 1947 before returning to the UK to become Chief Medical Officer for Sittingbourne at the birth of the NHS in 1948.

He spent two years in Kent before being snapped up the World Health Organisation which sent him to Korea in 1950 where he served as public health administer until 1956.

He was awarded the CIE (Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire) in the New Year's Honours of 1941 by King George VI and was given the Commandership of the Order of Orange Nassau by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1946 for helping to liberate Holland.

He had the unusual distinction of being made a Freeman of the City of Naples and receiving the cross of merit of the Order of Malta (1st Class) for his work in Italy battling venereal disease.

A spokesman for the auction house said: "It is rare for medals with such historical significance in Britain, Malta and India to be sold."

He described him as a "talented and dashing figure" who operated as a surgeon in Persia and Pakistan and later as chief medical officer in Delhi and Simla. He was in active service during the Second World War in what is now Iraq and Iran.

The Colonel was born in Malta in 1896 and studied medicine in Edinburgh where he took British nationality and changed his name from Critian. He joined the Indian Medial Service in 1924 and went on to become agency's surgeon on the Afghanistan border before moving to northern Waziristan where he was attacked by a religious fanatic with an axe in1932. The assault left him with a permanently damaged left arm.

Following his recovery, he was appointed chief health officer of Delhi in 1936.

After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 he joined the 40th Indian Infantry Brigade in Italy where he took charge of public health and welfare. He was later transferred to a similar post with the 21st Army Group, British Army of Liberation before returning to India.

He died at his family home in the picturesque village of West Meon, Hampshire, on February 16, 1984, aged 88.

Many of his papers are held at Cambridge University's Centre of South Asian Studies.

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