A Great War M.C. and Bar attributed to Lieutenant E. P. Welby, Lincolnshire Regiment, late Manchester Regiment

Military Cross, G.V.R., with Second Award Bar, the reverse privately engraved, ‘Lieut. E. P.Welby, 8th Lincolns’, good very fine £600-800

M.C. London Gazette 11 January 1919:

‘He volunteered to lead a party to clear a trench occupied by the enemy, which he did with great dash and skill, in spite of difficulties, capturing a machine-gun, the detachment of which was accounted for. His gallantry and able leadership were worthy of great praise.’

Bar to M.C. London Gazette 30 July 1919:

‘For great gallantry and good leadership at the River Selle on 11-12 October 1918. He was in command of the first troops to cross the river, and skilfully effected the crossing and organised the defences on the far side under heavy fire. During the 12th he and his men were subject to machine-gun and rifle fire throughout the day, but by his example and leadership he maintained his position and defeated all attempts of the enemy to dislodge them. During the day he carried out a very valuable reconnaissance on the east side of the river and obtained information which helped to clear up the situation on his right.’

Edgar Patrick Welby, who was born in 1895, enlisted in the Manchester Regiment in November 1916, was advanced to Lance-Corporal in April 1917 and, shortly thereafter, was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment. Subsequently awarded the M.C. for his gallantry at Cambrai, where he cleared an enemy trench and captured a machine-gun, he added a Bar to his decoration for the crossing of the River Selle in October 1918, when he held a position on the far bank and gathered valuable intelligence.

Demobilised in February 1919, Welby became a rubber plantation manager in Kuala Lumpur, and moved to Singapore in 1932, where he managed no less than eight plantations, but was taken ill at the end of the same year and died in Singapore General Hospital; sold with two original Great War period portrait photographs, in uniform and with ink inscriptions, together with three photographs taken in Malaya in the mid-1920s and a local newspaper obituary.

See Lot 193 for the MC, DFC group awarded to his brother