Orders, Decorations and Medals

Pair: Private W. P. S. Nowell, Yorkshire Light Infantry

British War and Victory Medals (41241 Pte., Yorks. L.I.) good very fine (lot) £50-70

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The collection of Medals formed by the Late Clive Nowell.

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William Percival Sydney Nowell was born in 1893. At the outbreak of war he was teaching at the Yorkshire College for the Deaf at Doncaster. He volunteered for military service but was rejected on medical grounds (eyesight). However on 24 October 1916 he was conscripted into the Yorkshire Light Infantry, medically graded B1 (fit for garrison duties) and, having completed basic training at Marske-on-Sea, was sent to France, serving in the environs of Albert and Amiens. From the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Light Infantry he was transferred to the Army Reserve on 13 February 1919. Towards the end of his working life Nowell was employed in the Ministry of Labour & National Service, Acton, as Secretary to the National Service medical inspection boards. Although over retiring age when National Service ended, he was asked to transfer to the R.A.F’s. civilian staff to assist in setting up similar medical inspection arrangements for recruits. He was awarded the Air Officer Commanding’s Commendation in 1963 in recognition of this work. He died in Edgeware Hospital on 2 August 1966

Sold with damaged medal card box of issue; Classification Certificate, Pontefract, 11 September 1916; Protection Certificate, 16 January 1919; Certificate of Transfer to the Reserve, 13 February 1919; Soldier’s Demobilization Account; Out-of-Work Donation Policy booklet; postcard booklet of Albert (Somme) before and after the bombardment; postcard booklet of Amiens (Somme);
photograph of the recipient; Driving Licence to William Percival Sydney Nowell, of The White House, Chalfont St. Peter, 1935-38; framed Certificate of ‘Commendation by the Air Officer Commanding, R.A.F. Record Office’, 12 June 1963; a letter of congratulations from Group Captain E. D. Levien, D.S.O., D.F.C., for the award of a Commendation, 7 June 1963, with envelope addressed to him as ‘Medical Attendant, R.A.F. Medical Board, Turnstile House, High Holborn, London, W.C.1’ .