Auction Catalogue

19 & 20 March 2008

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations and Medals

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

Lot

№ 1275

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20 March 2008

Hammer Price:
£280

Six: Leading Coder G. E. P. Moseley, Royal Navy, who was for a time a Prisoner-of-War of the ‘Vichy French’

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star; Pacific Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf, all unnamed, mounted as worn, good very fine (lot) £160-200

M.I.D. London Gazette 11 June 1946.

Gerald Edward Percy Moseley was born in 1917, the son of Edward William and Nellie Ida Moseley of Eton, Buckinghamshire. Educated at Eton Porny School for Boys, he later entered the Royal Navy. During the Second World War he served as a Coder on the battleship Barham - the ship being torpedoed and sunk on 25 November 1941. He then went on to serve on the destroyer Havock. On 6 April 1942 the ship ran aground off Kelibia on the Tunisian coast. Taken prisoner by the Vichy French, he was held with others from the stranded ship at the prison camp at Laghouat in Algeria. They were released in November 1942 following the allied landings in North Africa. Late in the war he was serving as a Temporary Leading Coder on the sloop Crane in the Far East and was mentioned in despatches for his services in the ‘winding up operations’ in that theatre. Postwar he was Deputy Treasurer of the Eton Urban District Council and thence the Maidenhead Borough Council and for 52 years was the Treasurer of the Eton Ex-Serviceman’s Club. He died of pneumonia at Wrexam Park Hospital, Slough, in January 2006.

Sold with The Book of Common Prayer, presented to him by Eton Porny School, 1930; two photographs of recipient in uniform; a ‘H.M.S. Barham’ 1942 Calender, bearing a photograph of the battleship, the calender inscribed, ‘[From] Gerald with fondest love’; ‘H.M.S. Barham’ Xmas Card, bearing a photograph of the battleship, inscribed, [From] Gerald with fondest love to you all’; H.M.S. Barham cap tally; ‘S.280’ Card; three ‘S.247a’ Identity Cards, named to Moseley as a Coder/ Leading Coder on H.M. Ships Barham, Havock and Crane; Station Card, Royal Naval Barracks, named to Moseley as an Ordinary Coder; four handwritten letters to Moseley from family and friends, 1945; Medal forwarding slip; riband bars (2); framed photograph of a destroyer; presentation wooden box, inside of lid with metal plaque inscribed (name engraved), ‘1939-1945, G. E. P. Mosely (sic) in Appreciation of your Courage and Self-Sacrifice from your Fellow Citizens of Eton and Eton Wick’; newspaper cutting bearing his photograph, announcing his death; together with copied research.

For his father’s medals, see Lot 808.