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Lot

№ 19 x

.

8 September 2015

Hammer Price:
£900

A Great War Cambrai 1917 M.C. group of four awarded to 2nd Lieutenant E. G. Parfitt, Royal Field Artillery, who was taken P.O.W. during the German Spring Offensive

Military Cross, G.V.R., the reverse privately engraved, ‘E. G. Parfitt, Lieut., R.F.A., Cambrai 1917’; 1914-15 Star (W-84 B.S. Mjr. E. G. Parfitt, R.F.A.); British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut. E. G. Parfitt), good very fine (4) £800-1000

M.C. London Gazette 18 July 1918:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. His battery being under very heavy shell fire, the personnel were ordered by the battery commander to leave the position. He remained near, and saw the S.O.S. signal sent up in the sector his battery was covering. He at once collected the men, got the battery into action, himself forming one of the gun detachments until reinforced. The battery was being heavily shelled and suffering casualties, and it was to a large extent due to his courage and initiative that it came into action so promptly at a very critical time.’

Ewart Gladstone Parfitt, a native of Newport, Monmouthshire, arrived in France as a Battery Sergeant-Major in the Royal Field Artillery on 23 December 1915. Subsequently commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in July 1917, he won his M.C. for the above cited deeds at Cambrai in the same year. He was taken P.O.W. during the German Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918 and was repatriated in December of the same year; sold with brief copied research.