Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A good Great War D.C.M., M.M. group of five awarded to Sergeant L. Dawe, Royal Field Artillery, late Royal Horse Artillery, who was twice wounded and twice decorated for his gallant deeds in ‘D’ Battery, 112 Brigade, R.F.A.: the unit’s part in operations on the Western Front in 1917-18 is the subject of Huntly Gordon’s critically acclaimed The Unreturning Army

Distinguished Conduct Medal, G.V.R. (43358 Sjt. L. Dawe, D. 112/Bde. R.F.A.); Military Medal, G.V.R. (43358 Sjt. L. Dawe, R.F.A.); 1914-15 Star (43358 Cpl. L. Dawe, R.H.A.); British War and Victory Medals (43358 Sjt. L. Dawe, R.A.), contact marks and polished, thus good fine or better (5) £1800-2200

D.C.M. London Gazette 1 January 1918:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. His courage and coolness under fire on all occasions during the recent operations have been of the greatest assistance to his battery.’

M.M. London Gazette 13 March 1919.

Leonard Dawe was born in Holloway, Middlesex and enlisted in the Royal Artillery direct from the 1st (Volunteer) Battalion, Essex Regiment in April 1906, aged 18 years. Assigned to the Royal Horse Artillery (R.H.A.), he was embarked for India in the following year and was still serving there at the outbreak of hostilities. Returning to England in October 1914, he was embarked for France as a Corporal in an Ammunition Column R.H.A. at the year’s end.

In November 1915, Dawe transferred to ‘D’ Battery, 112 Brigade, R.F.A., in which unit he was promoted to Sergeant in July 1916 and won his D.C.M. for the above cited deeds in the Messines-Ypres sector in 1917, where he was wounded on 15 July 1917. Fortunately for posterity’s sake, the story of 112’s Brigade’s batteries has been vividly described by Huntly Gordon in The Unreturning Army, including the period of the author’s attachment to ‘D’ Battery about the time Dawe was wounded. As related by Gordon, ‘D’ Battery was all but wiped out in the summer of 1917, one old sweat stating it had taken much worse punishment than ‘L’ Battery, R.H.A. in its costly action at Le Cateau in 1914. A case in point would be the following incident related by Gordon in late July:

‘I can hardly write this. At 2.30 p.m. without any warning, our gun position fairly caught it. Almost the first two shells scored direct hits on our frail little sandbag shelters. The shelters were both full of men, and were blown to pieces. For two hours the position was pounded with five-nines, and some heavier stuff. I was with Major Sumpter and Lieutenant Nurcombe, resting in our mess, in the basement of a ruined house close by. We twice tried to get to the guns with stretchers, but the Hun had put down a box barrage and it was suicide to move about. We could not see the gun position for the smoke of the shells. For over two hours the whole area was flying and humming with shell-splinters. We waited in agony of mind-but could do nothing-absolutely nothing.

Then suddenly the shelling stopped, and we went out there with stretchers. The place was a shambles, indescribable, a ploughed field of reeking craters with the guns pointing in all directions. A few men crawled from their little shelters, bleeding and staggering about, and were led away. A doctor came running from the dressing-station with an orderly, and worked on the badly wounded. Men from adjoining batteries helped with the stretchers. When everyone alive had been taken away, we collected what fragments remained of the dead in blankets and sandbags - a ghastly harvest - and laid them in a dugout to await burial.

After a count, the reckoning is that of the forty-six of us at the gun-position, only eleven are left, some badly shaken but game to carry on. Twelve were killed, thirteen wounded, ten shell-shocked. By some freak only one gun was smashed by a direct hit, though all were damaged. There are just enough of us left to man these five guns, at two to each gun, for S.O.S. calls.’

Wounded for a second time on 29 September 1918, Dawe was invalided to England in October and awarded the M.M. He was discharged as a result of ‘multiple wounds’ by a Medical Board at Bristol in July 1919, when the degree of his disablement was assessed at 60%; sold with original H.Q. Fourth Army congratulatory message for the recipient’s award of the M.M., dated 19 December 1918, a copy of Huntly Gordon’s The Unreturning Army and copied service record.