Memories of a remarkable hero of Polar exploration are being kept safe for posterity at a York museum.

Captain Alan Henshall, curator of the Royal Dragoon Guards Regimental Museum, in Tower Street, York, with two medals given to the late Capt Lawrence Oates

The medals of Captain Lawrence Oates, who walked to his death in a deliberate act of self-sacrifice during Scott's final and tragic expedition to the Antarctic, are on display in the Regimental Museum in Tower Street.

He was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal with bars before setting out with Captain Scott, then received the Polar Medal as a member of the Terra Nova landing party before the march to the South Pole began.

Captain Oates is best-known for his action on the return journey from the Pole, after the bitter disappointment of finding Amundsen had got there first.

Suffering badly from frostbite and not wishing to slow his comrades down, Captain Oates left their tent and walked into a blizzard on March 17, 1912 - which was his 32nd birthday and St Patrick's Day - with the immortal words recorded in Scott's diary: "I am just going outside and may be some time."

Though the sacrifice was ultimately in vain, it has remained etched in the annals of his old regiment, the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoons, now amalgamated into the Royal Dragoon Guards, which celebrates Oates Sunday on the closest Sunday to St Patrick's Day.

The Polar Medal was purchased at auction by his old regiment in 1984 for the then record price of £55,000, and has now been transferred to the York museum, along with Captain Oates's South Africa Medal, awarded after he served with distinction in the Boer War, which has been loaned by another museum in Hampshire.

On September 17 other mementoes of the Scott and Shackleton Polar expeditions are to be auctioned at Christie's, amid fears they could be taken out of the country.

Describing Captain Oates, who was born in Putney but came of Yorkshire descent, as the "epitome of the great adventurer", Captain Alan Henshall, curator of the regimental museum, said he was pleased they had the Polar Medal.

"It's priceless - once it had gone abroad we would never have got it back," he said. He was also pleased the museum had his South Africa medal in time for the 100th anniversary of the Boer War.

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