Orders, Decorations and Medals

A rare Great War M.M. group of five awarded to Sergeant G. W. Grain, London Regiment, who was wounded on the Somme with “The Rangers” and afterwards attained the rank of Staff Sub-Inspector in the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia

Military Medal, G.V.R. (318050 Sjt. G. W. Grain, 5/Lond. R.); 1914-15 Star (1938 Pte., 12-Lond. R.); British War and Victory Medals (1938 Sjt., 12-Lond. R.); Army L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 3rd issue, Southern Rhodesia (2191 Trooper, M.M., B.S.A.P.), mounted as worn, contact marks and somewhat polished, otherwise generally very fine (5) £800-1000

M.M. London Gazette 24 January 1919.

George William Grain, who was born in Peckham, London in February 1897, enlisted in the 12th Battalion (“The Rangers”), London Regiment in April 1914 and arrived in the French theatre of war with the newly formed 1st Battalion on Christmas Eve 1914. Undoubtedly present in the heavy fighting at Ypres in the following year, he was also wounded in the leg by shrapnel from a bursting shell on the Somme in 1916, most probably on 1 July, when his battalion suffered a total of 517 casualties. Back with his unit in time for the battle of Arras in April 1917, he appears to have transferred to the 5th London Regiment in January 1918, and was subsequently awarded the M.M.

Having then been demobilised in the rank of Sergeant in early 1919, Grain sailed for Cape Town in January of the following year and attested for the British South Africa Police. Thus ensued a long and distinguished career in Southern Rhodesia, where he was stationed variously in Gwelo, Bulawayo, Hartley and Umtali Districts and, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, was instrumental in establishing permanent camps at Norton and Cashel. Early on in his career he broke a leg after falling down a disused mine shaft in Selukwe, while in 1927 he was admitted to Salisbury Hospital to have two pieces of shrapnel removed from his old Somme wound. Transferring to the Staff Branch of the Force in 1934, he gained steady advancement, rising to the rank of Staff Sub.-Inspector in March 1945, shortly before his retirement. He had, meanwhile, been gazetted for his L.S. & G.C. Medal in September 1933, which distinction he received from the hands of H.R.H. Prince George at a special parade held at Salisbury in March of the following year.

Having briefly returned to England, where he found the climate unsuitable for his health, Grain was employed as competition operator and announcer for Southern Rhodesia State Lotteries, in which capacity, until retiring in June 1961, his ‘words were hung on by tens of thousands, perhaps hundereds of thousands of radio listeners, in Rhodesia and South Africa - in all, it is estimated, during his service with the Lotteries, he announced the winners of more than £12,000,000.’ Cheerful and popular to the end, Grain died suddenly in Salisbury in January 1963.