Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Able Seaman J. Leary, Royal Navy, killed in action, 11 February 1918 when serving on the ‘Q’ Ship H.M.S. Cullist, awarded a posthumous M.I.D. having previously been awarded the Romanian Medal for Hardihood and Loyalty

1914-15 Star (228557 A.B. R.N.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (228557 A.B. R.N.); Romania, Medal for Hardihood and Loyalty, 2nd Class with swords, silver, unnamed, good very fine (4) £800-1000

M.I.D. London Gazette 22 February 1918. ‘... for services in action with enemy submarines.’ ‘A.B. Jeremiah Leary, O.N. 228557 (Po.) (missing)’

Romanian Distinguished Conduct Medal, 2nd Class London Gazette 17 March 1919.

Jeremiah Leary was born in Portsmouth on 25 February 1887. He entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in October 1903. Ranked as a Boy 1st Class in May 1904; Ordinary Seaman in March 1905 and Able Seaman in June 1907. During the Great War he served on the old battleship Queen, June 1914-February 1917 and then from May 1917 on Cullist. The Cullist, ex Jurassic, was taken up as a store carrier in 1914 but was later fitted out as a ‘Q’ Ship, which also operated under the names of Hayling, Prim and Westphalia. Cullist with Leary on board was engaged in five actions with German submarines.

In an action fought on 13 July 1917, with the Cullist operating between the French and Irish coasts, an enemy submarine was sighted on the surface at 11,000 yards range, from where it began shelling the Q-Ship. After firing 38 rounds without recording a hit, the enemy was enticed to close the range to 5,000 yards where it fired a further 30 rounds, some of which straddled their target. At the lower range, Cullist was able to return fire and scored several hits to the submarine’s conning tower, gun and deck. The submarine was then seen to explode.

On 20 August 1917, in the English Channel, an enemy submarine sighted on the surface opened fire on the Cullist at 9,000 yards range. The submarine fired 82 rounds, just one of them hit, on the waterline of the stokehold, the shell injuring both the firemen on watch and causing flooding in the stoke hold, which was overcome by plugging the hole and shoring it up. The submarine then closed the range to 4,500 yards at which time the Cullist returned fire and scored two hits in the area of the conning tower, upon which the submarine was seen to dive and contact was lost.

On 28 September 1917, in another hotly contested action, Cullist opened fire on a submarine at 5,000 yards range. Thirteen rounds were fired of which eight were direct hits, causing the submarine to settle down by the bow while 30 feet of his stern was standing out of the water. It remained in this position for ten to fifteen seconds before disappearing. Later another submarine was spotted and the Cullist went off in hot pursuit but to no avail.

Another brush with the enemy took place on 17 November 1917, when the Cullist was sighted by an enemy submarine which opened fire at 8,000 yards range. Within five minutes the enemy had the range and a shell glanced off the Cullist’s side, damaging one of three officers’ cabins before bursting on the water-line. After disappearing in a bank of fog the submarine re-appeared and continued to shell the Cullist with such accuracy that for 50 minutes the decks and bridge were continually sprayed with shell splinters drenched with water from near misses. In all, the enemy fired 92 rounds, while the Cullist returned fire from 4,500 yards, 14 rounds being fired at the submarine of which six were seen to be direct hits. The submarine, although badly damaged, was able to turn away, dive and escape.

On 11.2.18, the Cullist’s luck ran out & she was torpedoed without warning in the Irish Sea off Drogheda, and sank in two minutes with Able Seaman J. Leary missing believed K.I.A. and awarded a posthumous M.I.D. for this action.

With copied service paper, Gazette extracts and other research.