Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The mounted miniature dress medal group of seven attributed to Lieutenant-Commander G. P. Baker, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

1914-15 Star; British War Medal 1914-20, 9 clasps, Home Seas 1914, Mediterranean 1915, Mediterranean 1916, Mediterranean 1917, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, Red Sea, Eastern Baltic 1918-19, Mine Clearance 1918-19; Victory Medal 1914-19; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Defence and War Medals, M.I.D. oakleaf, all unnamed, mounted as worn, generally extremely fine (7) £100-140

Geoffrey Percival Baker joined the “Wavy Navy” in September 1914 and served as a Signalman until commissioned as a Sub Lieutenant in mid-1916, his wartime appointments taking him to the Dardanelles, Gallipoli and the Adriatic, and in 1919, as a Lieutenant, to the North Sea and the Baltic on mine clearance duties.

Called up again in September 1939, he served briefly in H.M.S. Niger before taking command of the minesweeper Plinlimmon that December, and it was in that capacity that he was mentioned in despatches for his command under enemy air attack in the Channel on 9 February 1940 (London Gazette 16 August 1940 refers). He and his crew went on to lend valuable service in Operation Dynamo, his accompanying report describing trips to La Panne and Dunkirk on 31 May, when the Plinlimmon was ordered to depart the former place with just 50 men embarked, owing to ‘shells falling all around’, but at Dunkirk picked up a further 900 men, together with fighter ace, Pilot Officer V. B. S. Verity - the latter being plucked from the sea after being shot down. And on 3 June, Baker and his men were ordered to take the paddle minesweeper Oriole to Dunkirk, this time returning to Margate with assorted French and Dutch troops.

With ‘Mine-Sweeping/Ant-Submarine’ pin-backed badge and pin-backed M.I.D. emblem with associated slips (not named).

Lieutenant-Commander Baker’s full-size medals and papers were sold in D.N.W. 16 September 2010, lot 144.