Auction Catalogue

26 March 2009

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

Lot

№ 803

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26 March 2009

Hammer Price:
£900

A scarce Great War M.M. group of four awarded to Petty Officer R. Rodgers, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, attached Royal Naval Division, who was wounded by a gas shell in March 1918

Military Medal, G.V.R. (CZ-3527 A.B., Nelson Bn., R.N.V.R.); 1914-15 Star (C.Z. 3527 L.S., R.N.V.R.); British War and Victory Medals (C.Z. 3527 P.O., R.N.V.R.), minor official correction to surname on the first and officially corrected initial ‘H.’ on the third, generally good very fine (4) £700-900

M.M. London Gazette 23 February 1918.

Robert Rodgers, a fitter from Springburn, Glasgow, who was born in September 1894, enlisted in the Clyde Division, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, in March 1915 and was sent South to Crystal Palace. Posted as an Able Seaman to Nelson Battalion, Royal Naval Division, in early December 1915, he served with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and was embarked at Mudros for France in May 1916.

Reprimanded that September - ‘neglect of duty in that whilst in charge of a hut at Noulette, gambling was going on’ - Rodgers suffered further misfortune with a badly ulcerated foot and was admitted to 2 Stationary Hospital at Abbeville in late November, an injury that eventually resulted in his evacuation to the U.K. in April 1917.

Rejoining Nelson Battalion in France in August 1917, the award of his M.M. was announced in the Battalion’s routine orders that November, in which month he was also advanced to Acting Leading Seaman. Further promoted to Petty Officer in January 1918, he was attached to Drake Battalion in the following month and was wounded by a gas shell on 14 March - admitted to 7 Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, he was duly evacuated to a military hospital in Birchington, Kent, where, on 10 April, he was presented with his M.M. Rodgers ended the War at Aldershot, attending a musketry course, and was finally demobilised at Georgetown, Paisley in March 1919.