Orders, Decorations and Medals

Family group:

Three: Private G. W. Haynes, Royal Marine Light Infantry

1914-15 Star (PO. 14959 Pte., R.M.L.I.); British War and Victory Medals (PO. 14959 Pte., R.M.L.I.), good very fine

Three: Craftsman E. G. Haynes, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

1939-45 Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45, in their card forwarding box, together with a quantity of related prize medals (6), mainly for Civil Service weight-lifting competitions in the 1950s, four enamelled and three named, and a motor-cycling contest prize shield, also named to the recipient and dated ‘13.5.1958’, generally good very fine (Lot) £100-150

George Walter Haynes was born in Battersea, London in September 1889 and enlisted in the Royal Marine Light Infantry in August 1907. A Private serving aboard the battleship H.M.S. Audacious on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he quickly saw service of the active kind when she was sunk by a mine off Northern Ireland on 27 October 1914, thereby winnning the unfortunate accolade of being the first capital ship of any nation to be lost in the Great War. The mines had been laid by the Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Berlin, which had been fitted out as an auxiliary cruiser and minelayer early in August. The Audacious blew up and sank after 12 hours of buffeting by the seas and two failed attempts to take her in tow, but luckily her complement was safely taken off by the White Star liner Olympic.

Joining the battleship Queen Elizabeth that December, Haynes remained similarly employed until returning home to an appointment in the Portsmouth Division in January 1918, a period in which he witnessed extensive active service in the Dardanelles and off Gallipoli. Of all the capital ships employed in that theatre, the Queen Elizabeth was one of the most actively engaged. Carrying out a successful bombardment with her 15-inch guns of the Turkish Narrows forts from a position off Gabe Tepe in early March 1915, she went on to witness the famous landings in the following month, when Sir Ian Hamilton used her as his ‘mobile H.Q.’ off the beach heads. Off Helles, as evidenced by Hamilton’s own account, one of her shells saved an advancing British unit:

‘At a trot they came on ... their bayonets glittering and their officer yards in front waving his sword, Crash! and the Queen Elizabeth let fly a shrapnel [shell], range 1200 yards, a lovely shot; we followed it through the air with our eyes. Range and fuse - perfect! The huge projectile exploded fifty yards from the Turkish right and vomited its contents of 10,000 bullets clean across the stretch whereon the Turkish company was making its last effort. When the dust and smoke cleared away nothing stirred on the whole of that piece of ground.’

A superb painting depicting the Queen Elizabeth bombarding the Turkish Narrows forts in March 1915, by Norman Wilkinson, forms part of the Imperial War Museum’s collection.

Haynes was discharged in October 1919; sold with around 20 photographs of the Great War period, and four postcards, these including one or two good portraits of the recipient, and a later image of him in the uniform of the Auxiliary Fire Service.

Also sold with a quantity of original documentation relating to Edwin George Haynes, including his official “call up” papers, letters and his Soldier’s Release Book, the latter dated 5 July 1947.