Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War ‘Western Front’ M.C. group of three awarded to Lieutenant Neville Aldridge Holdaway, Royal Army Education Corps, late 1st/8th (Ardwick) Battalion Manchester Regiment, an author and a noted Marxist theorist

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed; British War and Victory Medals (Lieut.) mounted court style as worn, good very fine (3) £1000-1400

M.C. London Gazette 16 September 1918. ‘Lt., Manchester Regiment’ ‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When this officer observed that the officer in charge of an important advanced post had become a casualty, he immediately went up through a heavy barrage and took command. He organised and controlled the fire of the garrison with such effect that the enemy began to waver, so he promptly advanced, inflicting severe casualties; but finding them too numerous, he withdrew, after ascertaining their dispositions. His courage and coolness throughout the whole operations were very marked.’

Neville Aldridge Holdaway was born in 1894 at Wroxall on the Isle of Wight. He graduated with a B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.) from the University of London and a University of London Diploma in Geography. He trained as a Schoolmaster at the Westminster Training College. In the Great War he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant from the Artists Rifles Officers Training Corps on 6 December 1915 (London Gazette 11 December 1915), being appointed to the 8th (Ardwick) Battalion Manchester Regiment. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 1 January 1917. With the battalion he entered France on 10 February 1917 and actively served in the trenches at Festubert, Le Touret and St. Venant until 21 August 1917. He returned to France, 12 January-1 September 1918.
During late March 1918 his unit was at the front near Gomiecourt. In an action on 27 March 1918, west of Ablainzevelle, he assumed control of a small advance post manned by two sections of the 1/8th and 1/10th Battalion Manchester Regiment and by his bravery and leadership in action, was to win the Military Cross - the action being recorded in the official War Diary of the 1/8th Battalion. In late August he was wounded (?), and passed through the 3rd Field Ambulance at Louvencourt, to the 3rd Casualty Clearing Station at Gézaincourt, to No. 8 General Hospital at Rouen and thence to No. 27A British Red Cross Hospital in England.





After the war, he served as Officer Instructor in the Army Educational Scheme, 1919-20; was ‘on supply’ with London County Council Schools, 1920; and was Officer Instructor with the rank of Lieutenant in the Army Educational Corps, 1921-23, being appointed as such by London Gazette 3 April 1923. On leaving the Army he was appointed an Assistant Master of the County Secondary School, Newport, Isle of Wight, 1923-26; was then Second Assistant Master at La Martiniere College, Lucknow, India, 1926-30; after which he was appointed Senior Geography Master at Surbiton County School, Surbiton Hill, Surrey in 1931. As a member of the Reserve of Officers Holdaway served during the Second World War and he finally relinquished his commission as Lieutenant in the Royal Army Education Corps on 27 February 1952 (London Gazette 26 February 1952). Holdaway was elected a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1926. He died in 1954.

In addition to his duties as a schoolmaster, Holdaway was a noted Marxist theorist. He was Director of the short-lived ‘Adelphi Centre’, 1934-37, a commune based on a farm in Langham, Essex. In a summer school during 1936, George Orwell was one of the speakers there. In Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, Holdaway is mentioned as ‘one of the ablest Marxist writers we possess’, who had written, ‘The hoary legend of Communism leading to Fascism. ... The element of truth in it is this: that the appearance of Communist activity warns the ruling class that democratic Labour Parties are no longer capable of holding the working class in check, and that capitalist dictatorship must assume another form if it is to survive. ....’ Holdaway was co-author, with J. Middleton Murray, John Macmurray and G. D. H. Cole of Marxism, published in 1935. In an entirely different vein, under the pseudonym ‘N. A. Temple-Ellis’ he was the author of: The Inconsistent Villains, 1929; The Cauldron Bubbles, 1930; The Man Who Was There, 1930; Quest, 1932; The Case in Hand, 1933; The Hollow Land, 1934, and Murder in the Ruins, 1936.

With original Commission document appointing him a 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th (Ardwick) Battalion The Manchester Regiment (T.F.), 6 December 1915; loose hand-written pages entitled, ‘War Diary, France-Belgium, Feb 10-Aug. 20 1917 (with map)’ and signed ‘N. A. Holdaway, 2 Lt., 2/8 Bn. Manchester Regt. T.F.’; a hard backed exercise book (spine damaged), signed by N. A. Holdaway and entitled, ‘Diary. Six Months with the B.E.F., Feb.-Aug. 1917’ - 12 hand-written pages in ink, being the post-war recollections of Holdaway during those months when serving in England and France; loose hand-written pages entitled, ‘War Diary Jan’18-’ (to October 1918); with loosely bound pages from an exercise book, entitled, ‘Poems 1913-1918 by Neville Aldridge Holdaway’; 46 pages bearing hand-written poems in ink; Teachers Registration Council document, 1931; and several original (mainly group) photographs. Together with copied m.i.c., gazette and war diary extracts and other research.