Auction Catalogue

25 & 26 November 2015

Starting at 12:00 PM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Live Online Auction

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Lot

№ 627

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26 November 2015

Hammer Price:
£2,000

The Military General Service Medal awarded to Colour Serjeant William Lemon, 40th Regiment, who was wounded in Egypt, Badajoz and Waterloo

Military General Service 1793-1814, 4 clasps, Vimiera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Toulouse (W. Lemon, Serjt., 40th Foot) edge bruise, contact marks, about very fine £1200-1600

Ex Spink, November 2005.

William Lemon was born in Combestock, near Exeter, Devon c.1771 and enlisted in the 40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment of Foot with the rank of Corporal in July 1799. He served with the regiment during operations on and off the coast of Egypt, and suffered a wound to the right arm during the heavy fighting at the battle of Alexandria, 21 March 1801. He was promoted to Serjeant in 1802 and served with the regiment throughout the Peninsula War, from the battle of Vimiera, August 1808 to the battle of Toulouse, April 1814. He was wounded in the right hand at Badajoz in Spring 1812, his wounds preventing him from taking part in the main assault and from qualifying for the clasp. Lemon served with the Regiment in Captain P. Bishop’s Company during the Waterloo Campaign and received a severe fracture of the jaw at Waterloo, 18 June 1815. Colour Serjeant Lemon was discharged in May 1817, after 19 years and 297 days with the Colours, having ‘shown much gallantry in the face of the enemy’. Latterly a Trunk Maker and a Chelsea Pensioner, he died in Devon on 8 March 1849, aged 76 years. He died before he was able to claim the ‘Egypt’ clasp for which he was entitled; this clasp not being sanctioned until February 1850. With copied discharge papers, death certificate and other research on paper and DVD.