Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War ‘1914’ D.S.O. group of four awarded to Captain James Reginald Russell, Royal West Kent Regiment

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R. , silver-gilt and enamel, complete with brooch bar, minor enamel damage; 1914 Star, with clasp (2 Lieut., R.W. Kent R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut.) nearly extremely fine (4) £1600-2000

D.S.O. London Gazette 1 December 1914. ‘For exceptional grit and gallantry in the trenches near Neuve Chapelle between 23 and 29 Oct.’

M.I.D. London Gazette 1 December 1914 & 17 February 1915.

James Reginald Russell was born in Westonbury, Pembridge, Herefordshire on 9 October 1893, the son of Henry Freeman Russell, J.P., of Southfield, Leominster, Herefordshire. He was educated at Bromsgrove and Sandhurst and was gazetted into the Royal West Kent Regiment in July 1914, being promoted to Lieutenant in October 1914. He served with them at the Battle of the Marne, being for some weeks at Missey. It served also at the Battles of the Aisne and Neuve Chapelle. Such was the action in the latter battle, that Lieutenant Russell was one of only two officers left out of the original fourteen. For their great services, Lieutenants Russell and White received the congratulations of General Smith-Dorien, were mentioned in despatches and each awarded the Distinguished Service Order - one of the first to be gazetted for the Great War.

In a speech to the 1st Battalion R. W. Kent Regiment on 8 November 1914, General Smith-Dorien said of the two officers, ‘I have received from the brigadier-general commanding your brigade an appreciation of the gallant conduct of Lieut. White and the other young officer (2nd Lieutenant Russell), who is not on parade today. The way these two young officers handled the regiment after all your officers had fallen; how they stuck to it and how eventually when the time came they brought the regiment out of it. I have brought their names to the notice of the Field Marshall Commanding the Troops and sincerely hope they will receive the reward they so richly deserve’.

Russell was invalided to England in November 1914 suffering from a serious illness. In August 1919 he married Gwendolen Edith Lawson, daughter of Rev. G. W. Lawson. The following year the two travelled to America. Catching Influenza in New York, Captain Russell died of Pneumonia in Los Angeles, aged 26 years.

Sold with D.S.O. bestowal document; the book, The First Seven Divisions, by Ernest W. Hamilton - this signed and marked by Russell; the magazine, T.P.’s Journal of Great Deeds of the Great War, 5 December 1914, which contains the article, ‘Gallant West Kents’; together with a number of newspaper cuttings re. Russell’s marriage and obituary.