Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Great War and Second World War group of eight awarded to Paymaster Captain B. O’F. Gregory, Royal Navy, a Dardanelles veteran who went on to win a brace of “mentions” in the cruiser Carlisle 1939-42, a period of intense operational activity that encompassed the withdrawal from Greece and Crete: one of the greatest dangers her crew faced ashore was the ‘exuberant rumbustious hospitality offered by huge weatherbeaten Autralians’ - grateful indeed for Carlisle having rescued them from certain captivity

1914-15 Star (Clk. B. O’F. Gregory, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Payr. S. Lt. B. O’F Gregory, R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; War Medal 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf; Coronation 1937, mounted as worn, contact marks, nearly very fine and better (8) £400-500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte.

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Brian O’Farrell Gregory, who was born in November 1896 and entered the Royal Navy as an Assistant Clerk in July 1914, joined the battleship Prince of Wales shortly before the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, in which ship he served in the Dardanelles in the following year - one of her first duties was to demolish the light house at Cape Helles, from which the Turks had been signalling, and her guns lent good service in bombarding other enemy batteries and positions in in the landings on 25 April 1915. Advanced to Clerk, Gregory remained in the Prince of Wales on the Adriatic Station until August 1916, latterly coming ashore to an appointment in Gibraltar.

Between the Wars he served in Hong Kong in the early 1920s, was on the staff of Rear-Admiral Dunbar Nasmith, V.C. in Dolphin, and served as Secretary to the Chief of Naval Air Services in the late 1930s. But shortly after the renewal of hostilties in 1939, he returned to sea in the anti-aircraft cruiser Carlisle, and quickly saw action off Norway in April-May 1940, when her guns supported the landings at Andalsnes and the withdrawal from Namsos - in addition to sinking the steamer Nord Norge alongside the destroyer Zulu.

Next present in operations in the Red Sea, including the evacuation of British troops from Berbera and Aden, Carlisle arrived as a guard ship for Port Suez in February 1941, where her guns were regularly in action against Heinkels from Rhodes. But it was for her subsequent part in the evacuations of mainland Greece and Crete that Carlisle won the admiration of all, her A.A. guns lending steady support against relentless onslaughts from enemy aircraft.

Yet she was far from immune from such unwelcome attention herself, taking a brace of bomb hits off Crete on 22 May 1941, the resultant explosions knocking out her twin 4-inch ‘B’ gun mounting and killing ten of the crew and supply party; so, too, setting ablaze her upperdeck ready-to-use ammunition lockers and knocking her funnel askew. Worse was to follow, however, as a Junkers 88 strafed her decks with cannon-fire from fore to aft, killing Captain T. C. Hampton. Commander H. B. C. Homes quickly stept into the breach, and had the battered cruiser back on an operational footing 30 minutes later, a typical act of determination that endeared him and the Carlisle’s crew to the troops she was evacuating - hence that threat ashore back in Alexandria, where a Carlisle cap tally was an invitation to free hospitality from countless ‘huge weatherbeaten Australians’.

Gregory was twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 1 January 1941 and 1 January 1942 refer), and ended the War with an appointment at the Royal Naval Air Sation Daedalus. He was advanced to Paymaster Captain in June 1945.