Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

British War Medal 1914-20 (G. 21035 Pte. L. Le Venois, Middx. R.), one or two edge bruises, very fine £40-60

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Small Collection of Awards to Channel Islanders.

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Leon Le Venois was born in Jersey of French parentage in 1896, his father probably being one of the many Breton farm workers who had immigrated to the island. His mother, Marie Rose Auffrett, was born in France in October 1875, and was residing at 7 La Motte Street, St. Helier, at the time of the Great War.

Employed at Messrs. Bashfords before the outbreak of hostilities, Leon enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment in the summer of 1915 and died of wounds while serving in the 13th Battalion on the Somme on 20 August 1916, just six weeks after having arrived in France. A subsequent obituary notice that appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 6 September stated that his mother had received a letter from the Army Chaplain who attended her son at 21st Casualty Clearing Station, the latter stating that her son had been badly wounded in the head by a piece of shell - ‘He lived some hours and was conscious now and then during which I was able to give him the Last Sacrament, which he received devoutly’. Le Venois is buried in La Neuville British Cemetery, Corbie; sold with copied research.