Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A good Great War M.M. awarded to Private A. Williams, Wiltshire Regiment, who served in the 5th Battalion in Gallipoli, where he was fortunate to survive the unit’s costly encounter at Chunuk Bair in August 1915, and in the 6th Battalion in France, where he was taken P.O.W. in the German Spring Offensive

Military Medal, G.V.R. (9741 Pte. A. Williams, 6/Wilts. R.), good very fine £350-400

M.M. London Gazette 21 August 1917.

Albert Williams was an early “Kitchener recruit” who was embarked with the 5th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, for Gallipoli in June 1915. Landing at Cape Helles in the following month, the Battalion suffered heavily in the action at Chunuk Bair on 10 August, when an overwhelming Turkish counter-attack, led by Mustapha Kemal in person, left it with losses of 135 dead and many more wounded - according to one regimental record, ‘more than half the officers and men were never seen again.’

It seems likely that Williams was among the wounded, for he did not accompany the Battalion to Mesopotamia following the withdrawal from Gallipoli. And he next went into action out in France with the 6th Battalion, where he was awarded the M.M., most probably for the fighting on Messines Ridge in June 1917, or possibly in subsequent battles on Passchendaele Ridge.

However, as recorded in regimental records, he was taken P.O.W. sometime after February 1918 - almost certainly in the German Spring Offensive, when the Battalion was decimated in the face of the onslaught at Bapaume and lost 20 officers and 500 other ranks, either killed, wounded, or taken P.O.W. Williams was discharged to the Reserve in June 1919; sold with copied research.