A Great War ‘Kut’ operations D.C.M. and Medaille Militaire group of six awarded to Company Quarter-Master Sergeant Harry Arlett, 1st Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

Distinguished Conduct Medal, G.V.R. (5766 T.C.Q.M. Sjt. H. Arlett, 1/O. & B.L.I.) minor erasure before regimental number; 1914-15 Star (5766 Sjt. H. Arlett, Oxf. & Bucks. L.I.); British War and Victory Medals (5766 W.O. Cl. 2 H. Arlett, Oxf. & Bucks. L.I.); Army L.S. & G.C., G.V.R. (5766 W.O. Cl. II. H. Arlett, D.C.M. Oxf. & Bucks. L.I.); France, Medaille Militaire, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, the group mounted for wearing, enamel chipped on the last, otherwise good very fine (6) £2000-2400

D.C.M. London Gazette 12 December 1917.

M.I.D. London Gazette 5 April 1916 (General Sir John Nixon, Mesopotamia, April to September 1915) and 13 July 1916 (Major-General C. V. F. Townshend, Operations Amara, 13 May to 4 June 1915)

Arlett’s award of the D.C.M., along with all others announced in this gazette, was published without a citation. As the Battalion was beseiged at Kut and subsequently fell prisoner to the Turks, it is likely that all records and battalion diaries were lost or destroyed in the ensuing months.

Arlett was born at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, and enlisted at Reading on 4 January 1898, aged 18 years 3 months. He does not appear to have served in the Boer War and had risen to the rank of Sergeant by 1913. Arlett served in the Persian Gulf from December 1914 and was slightly wounded in Mesopotamia on 28 September 1915, during the battle of Es Sinn. He was officially a ‘Presumed P of War’ in the casualty list of 29 May 1916, and confirmed as a prisoner of war at Angora on 16 March 1916. Arlett was released from Turkey and repatriated on 25 November 1918. He then served in the Army of the Black Sea, May 1919-March 1920, and is subsequently shown in the Regimental Chronicle as being the Quartermaster, in the rank of Lieutenant and later Captain, of the 4th Battalion during the years 1926-32. His brother also served with the battalion in Mesopotamia, eventually becoming R.S.M. and also winning the D.C.M. Sold with copy Military History Sheet and other research which does not, however, confirm the award of the Medaille Militaire.