Auction Catalogue

26 March 2009

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

Lot

№ 800

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26 March 2009

Hammer Price:
£780

A scarce Great War M.M. group of three awarded to Able Seaman F. C. Driffill, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, attached Royal Naval Division, who was killed in action in September 1918

Military Medal, G.V.R. (TZ-2343 A.B., Hawke Bn., R.N.V.R.); 1914-15 Star (T.Z. 2343 A.B., R.N.V.R.); British War Medal 1914-20 (T.Z. 2343 A.B., R.N.V.R.), the first with officially corrected surname and edge bruise, otherwise good very fine (3) £600-700

M.M. London Gazette 11 February 1919.

Frederick Cyril Driffill, a slater from Balby, Doncaster, who was born in July 1881, enlisted in the Tyneside Division, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, in December 1914, and was posted to Collingwood Battalion, Royal Naval Division. Transferred to Anson Battalion as an Able Seaman in May 1915, he served in Gallipoli and was evacuated to Alexandria from Cape Helles that December, as a result of sickness.

Re-mustered on the strength of a Reserve Battalion on his return to the U.K. in early 1916, Driffill was next posted to Nelson Battalion, and thence to Anson Battalion in March 1918, with whom he was posted missing in the German Spring Offensive, but later turned up as an ‘ex Divisional Wing straggler’. Sadly, however - and following advancement to Able Seaman (Higher Grade) and the announcement of his M.M. in Hawke Battalion’s routine orders - he was killed in action on 29 September 1918. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Vis-En-Artois Memorial, France.