Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare Second World War Somaliland 1940 operations D.S.O. group of seven awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel A. A. B. Harris-Rivett, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, attached Somaliland Camel Corps

Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R., 1st issue, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse of the suspension bar officially dated ‘1941’; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Malaya, G.VI.R. (Lt. Col. A. A. B. Harris-Rivett, D.S.O., Bedfs. Herts.); Coronation 1953, mounted as worn, minor official correction to regiment on the G.S.M., very fine or better (7) £2500-3000

D.S.O. London Gazette 11 February 1941:

‘For distinguished service in Somaliland.’

The original recommendation states:

‘For conspicuously gallant services from 10 June to 15 August 1940 in commanding under most difficult conditions, a column on the right flank of the Force. He, with his company, was situated some 70 miles from the nearest troops and, on his own initiative persistently worried the enemy and reported their strength and movements, until forced to withdraw by the advance of the main columns. When ordered to withdraw, he had to make his way by forced marches, nearly 80 miles to Berbera. He courageously won his way through to the coast with a small party of European and local Somalis.’

Adrian Andrew Brodie Harris-Rivett was born in Streatham, London, in April 1908, the son of a clergyman, and was originally commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 6th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment (Territorials) in August 1926.

Somaliland 1940

Subsequently obtaining a Regular Army commission in the Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Regiment in August 1930, he gained attachment to the Somaliliand Camel Corps (S.C.C.) in September 1936 and, having been advanced to Captain in August 1938 and onetime attached to the King’s African Rifles, was similarly employed at the time of the Italian invasion in June 1940.

When the Italians, with 350,000 troops stationed in Abyssinia and Eritrea, invaded British Somaliland in August 1940, with an army of 25,000 men, the Local Defence Force comprised just 1500 men, supported by a battalion of the Black Watch, the 1/2 and 3/15 Punjabis and the 2/K.A.R. - in total less than 6,000 men. Surrounded in the landward side, the British fell back to Berbera, inflicting heavy loss on the Italians as they went, not least at the gallant stand made in the Tug Argan Pass, where Captain Eric Wilson of the S.C.C. won a V.C. for his defence of “Observation Hill”.

For his own part Harris-Rivett commanded “Northcol” of the S.S.C. - comprising two Camel Troops of ‘A’ Company - initially in the north to defend the Dobo Pass, and afterwards in the retreat to Berbera, with a small party of Europeans, in addition to his Somalis. Recommended for an M.C., the award was upgraded to a D.S.O., a rare distinction indeed to a Captain.

Mutiny and Malaya

Following the evacuation of Somaliland, Harris-Rivett was granted the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and given command of the S.C.C., in which capacity he oversaw the S.C.C’s conversion to an armoured car role. But it was an unhappy period in the unit’s history owing to increasing resentment among its ranks, who felt they should be accorded the same rights as members of the Indian Army and, in June 1943, on the eve of the unit departing for a training exercise in Southern Rhodesia, where the rank and file feared they would not be accorded what they thought to be their proper status as Moslem troops, about 150 men mutinied - taking with them 223 rifles, one light machine-gun, seven Sten guns and three pistols. In the event, it proved to be a bloodless mutiny, but, nonetheless, a subsequent Court of Inquiry ordered that the S.C.C be disbanded.

Advanced to substantive Major in July 1946, Harris-Rivett next witnessed active service in the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in Malaya in the early 1950s, when he commanded the 1/2nd Gurkha Rifles. He left the Army in March 1955.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, comprising the recipient’s London Chamber of Commerce Commercial Education Certificate, dated Spring 1928; his commission warrants for the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the 6th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment (Territorials), dated 6 August 1928, and in the same rank in the Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Regiment, dated 29 August 1930; and his Coronation Medal 1953 certificate.