A Distinguished Service Medal and four other medals awarded to one of the first Norfolk men to join the Royal Air Force are set to fetch about £1,000 at auction.
The medals belonged to King's Lynn-born Flying Officer Samuel Edwards, who joined the RAF on April 1, 1918 - the day the air force was founded.
Now nearly a century later his medals are up for sale and they are expected to sell for between £1,000 and £1,200 at Spink in London on Wednesday, April 12.
Marcus Budgen, a medals specialist at Spink, said: 'Medals such as these to the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force for the Great War are seldom seen on the market.
'The fact that we are so lucky to have the items with original accompanying ephemera and documents illustrates the excellent work and sacrifice of Flying Officer Edwards.
'This makes them a very desirable group for the collector and we expect a lot of interest in the items on Wednesday.'
On May 1, 1918, a month after the RAF was founded Samuel Edwards was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. His citation said: 'For exceptional zeal and ability in the training of officers and men under very difficult conditions. An extremely hard working instructor. He has done much for the efficiency of the air service.'
The Distinguished Service Medal, a silver medal with distinctive blue and white vertically striped ribbon, was introduced for 'setting an example of bravery and resource under fire'.
Samuel John Edwards was born at King's Lynn on February 7, 1879. He and his parents - Wells-born ship carpenter, Samuel Edwards senior, and Holkham-born Maria Edwards - and his sisters, Clara, Lucy and Minnie, lived at Number 5, Temperance Buildings, in Lynn.
Samuel Edwards junior was 17 when he joined the Navy in October 1896. At the start of the First World War he was a Petty Officer aboard the battleship HMS Vengeance, but in July 1915 he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service.
In 1912,he married Harriett Coward and they had four children Sylvia, Gladys, Leslie and Claude.
The Edwards family settled in Kent, where Mr Edwards was landlord of the New Inn, Sittingbourne. He was 69 when he died on New Year's Day 1949.
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