Orders, Decorations and Medals

An unusual Great War Somme 1916 M.M. group of five awarded to Stoker 1st Class E. Wakley, Royal Navy, late Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry

Military Medal, G.V.R. (11027 Pte. E. Wakely, 6/D.C.L.I.); 1914-15 Star (29557 Pte., D. of Corn. L.I.); British War and Victory Medals (11027 Pte., D.C.L.I.); Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 2nd issue (K. 57570 Sto. 1, H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth), possible official correction to number on the last, contact marks and polished, good fine or better and a most unusual combination of awards (5) £400-500

M.M. London Gazette 27 October 1916.

Ernest Wakely, who was born in Plymouth in October 1892, first entered the French theatre of war as a Private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in May 1915, his subsequent award of the M.M. undoubtedly being for the Somme. The 6th Battalion first went into action at Delville Wood on 18 August 1916, a successful but costly attack that ended in severe hand-to-hand fighting and heavy bombardment - casualties amounted to 366 men. In the following month, in another attack against enemy trenches at Gueudecourt on the 16th, the Battalion sustained 300 casualties; Wakely’s MIC entry also reveals service in the Gloucestershire Regiment and East Surreys.

Demobilised in April 1919, Wakely joined the Royal Navy as an Acting Stoker 1st Class that July, his service record noting a possible souvenir of his earlier service in France, namely ‘a wound on the calf of right leg’. And he was still serving in a similar capacity at the time his record being transferred in January 1929, his L.S. & G.C. Medal being awarded to him in October of the following year - so his earlier service in the Army must have been taken into account; sold with copied R.N. record of service and other related research.