Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War ‘Western Front’ M.M. group of three awarded to Gunner A. E. Miller, Royal Garrison Artillery

Military Medal, G.V.R. (60992 Gnr., 156/Sge. By. R.G.A.); British War and Victory Medals (60992 Gnr., R.A.) nearly extremely fine (3) £300-350

M.M. London Gazette 16 July 1918.

Arthur Edward Miller was born at 53 Rainbow Street, Camberwell on 21 April 1888. During the Great War he enlisted into the Royal Garrison Artillery and served in France, was wounded and was awarded the Military Medal. During the Second Word War he served in the Home Guard and Police. Latterly he was employed as Security Officer at the Piccadilly Hotel, London.

Sold with recipient’s Birth Certificate; three photographs; copied m.i.c. and gazette extract; two notebooks, handwritten by the recipient, containing poems; one inscribed, ‘Written on the Battlefields of France in 1916, A. Miller, M.M.’, and ‘Property of A. Miller, M.M., 3 Grange House, 229 Church Street, Stoke Newington’. Also with a third notebook, written during the Second World War, containing his handwritten reminiscences of his time in the Army during the Great War - this with a typed version (plus floppy disk) entitled, ‘A Soldier’s Story’ (by) ‘A. E. Miller, M.M.’ In it, Miller relates his adventures in the Army, his brushes with authority and wartime action. ‘.... Then came the great retreat of March 1918, when we were machine gunned from our position, and lost five guns out of 6. At that time our artillery fire had played much havoc with the bosche that it was common knowledge that no allied prisoners were taken. When it looked as though we should be captured, I cut all my gun buttons off my tunic and great coat, and put a couple of red cross armlets in my pocket, so if I was captured I could say I was a stretcher bearer. We retreated 80 miles in five days, and each night we stopped and fired our 8in. howitzer, that fired a shell of 220lbs. I was given the job of plotting out the gun position (ie the line of fire) each night. ...’