A fascinating Great War ‘Western Front’ D.S.O., M.C. group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel G. E. Hawes, Royal Fusiliers and London Regiment

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel, complete with top bar; Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed; 1914-15 Star (Capt., R. Fus.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col.); France, Third Republic, Legion of Honour, Officer’s breast badge, gold and enamel, minor enamel damage, mounted as worn, good very fine (6) £2000-2500

D.S.O. London Gazette 1 June 1917. ‘Maj., M.C., R. Fus.’

M.C. London Gazette 23 June 1915. ‘Captain, Royal Fusiliers, attached 3rd (City of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Territorial Force)’.

M.I.D. (5) London Gazette 22 June 1915; 4 January 1917; 15 May 1917; 20 May 1918; 20 December 1918.

Legion of Honour, Chevalier London Gazette 11 March 1919.

George Ernest Hawes was born in 1882, the son of George Hawes of Coombe Park, Bath. He was educated at Charterhouse and the Royal Military College. Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant on the Unattached List in January 1901, he served in the Royal Fusiliers, October 1908-September 1911. He was promoted to Captain in February 1910 and Major in January 1916. During the Great War he was Adjutant of the 3rd Battalion London Regiment to July 1915, entering the France/Flanders theatre of war on 1 January 1915. With the London Regiment he was mentioned in despatches and won the Military Cross. Afterwards on the Staff as D.A.Q.M.G. 23 Division, September 1915-September 1917, and A.A. & Q.M.G. 19 Division from September 1917. For his services on the staff he was four times mentioned in despatches and awarded the D.S.O. and French Legion of Honour 5th Class, and granted the brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1919 he married Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, the eldest daughter of the 4th Earl of Rosslyn and the widow of the 4th Duke of Sutherland, her first husband, and divorcee of her second husband, Brigadier-General Percy Desmond Fitzgerald. Millicent divorced Hawes in 1926 but remained friends. As such she wrote the preface to his book, Elegant Extracts, published in 1936, this being a series of letters exchanged between Hawes and Edmund Malone, a brother officer. In 1938 Hawes formed a close relationship with the young actor, Joseph Wise. Lieutenant-Colonel Hawes died in London in 1946

In the book King of Fools, it relates that in 1920, the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, fell in love with Lady Rosemary Leverson-Gower, the youngest daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland by her first husband, the Duke. The Prince proposed marriage and was accepted but the King objected as it was felt that her mother’s action in divorcing Fitzgerald and marrying Hawes, who had been involved in a homosexual scandal, would be an unacceptable connection for the Royal Family. Ironically, marriage to a woman which could have saved the Royal Family and the nation from the anguish of the Prince’s later love, was thus rejected as unsuitable.

Sold with a walnut cigar case, 162 x 85 x 9mm. (approx.), the lid set with a silver plaque inscribed, ‘Neuve Chapelle March 1915; Festubert May 1915; Loos September 1915; Somme Sept. Nov. 1916; Messines June 1917; Ypres August 1917; Cambrai November 1917; Somme Retreat March 1918; Kemmel Retreat April 1918; Aisne Retreat May 1918; Advance to Cambrai Oct. 1918; Advance to Mauberge Nov. 1918; G.E.H. from J.R.M.F. Am Rhine 1919’. Also with the books (3), Elegant Extracts, by Edmund Malone and George Hawes, dedicated to Joseph Wise, with a signed portrait photograph of Hawes pasted inside, book spine damaged; Dear Duchess, Millicent Duchess of Sutherland, by Denis Stuart; King of Fools - the dark truth behind the romantic legend of Edward and Wallis, by John Parker; with copied gazette and newspaper extracts, m.i.c. and other research.