Orders, Decorations and Medals

A good Great War Royal Naval Division M.M. group of four awarded to Sub. Lieutenant T. B. Wall, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who was decorated for his bravery in Howe Battalion in the operations north of the Ancre in November 1916: having then been commissioned, he was wounded while serving in Hood Battalion in September 1918

Military Medal, G.V.R. (M.Z.-194 P.O. T. B. Wall, Howe Bn. R.N.V.R.); 1914-15 Star (MZ-194 A.B., R.N.V.R.); British War and Victory Medals (S. Lt., R.N.V.R.), together with R.N.D. silver anchor badge and Hood Battalion cap badge, the first with Birmingham hallmarks and the latter by J. R. Gaunt, London, good very fine and better (6) £1000-1200

M.M. London Gazette 19 February 1917.

Thomas Bishop Wall, a native of Heywood, near Manchester, was born in April 1893 and entered the Mersey Division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in September 1914. Posted to Howe Battalion in the Dardanelles as a signalman in the following year, he served on the Gallipoli Peninsula prior to being hospitalised that November with diptheria. On recovery, and having been advanced to Leading Seaman, he was embarked at Stavros for Marseilles, for service on the Western Front, in May 1916, where he was quickly advanced to Petty Officer and participated in the fighting north of the Ancre that autumn - indeed it was for the very same operations that Divisional Orders announced his award of his M.M. in December 1916.

Returning to the U.K. for a commission in the New Year, Wall was presented with his M.M. at a ceremony held at Pirbright in May 1917, a month before he was appointed to the rank of Sub. Lieutenant, and in April 1918, having attended a signalling course at Dunstable, he joined Hawke Battalion in France. In the following month, however, he transferred to Hood Battalion, with whom he was wounded in action on 3 September 1918, when he was admitted to 10th British Red Cross Hospital at Le Treport. Six weeks later he was moved to 35th General Hospital at Calais, and thence home for a period of leave, and therefore saw no further action. He was demobbed in February 1919, giving his intended place of residence as Bedford Street, Liverpool.