Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Great War D.S.O. group of six to Lieutenant Colonel Rt. Hon. G.W.F.S. Foljambe, 3rd Earl of Liverpool, late Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and 21st (Yeoman Rifles) King's Royal Rifle Corps

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE ORDER, G.V.R.; QUEEN'S SOUTH AFRICA 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Driefontein, Transvaal (Lt. Hon., Oxfd. L.I.); KING'S SOUTH AFRICA, 2 clasps (Lt. Hon., Oxford L.I.); 1914-15 STAR (Major Hon., Oxf. & Bucks. L.I.); BRITISH WAR AND VICTORY MEDALS, M.I.D. (Lt. Col. Hon.) the group mounted cavalry style as worn, very fine or better (6)

Gerald William Frederick Savile Foljambe was born in London, 12 May 1878. Like his elder brother he was educated at Eton and R.M.C. Sandhurst, being commissioned 16 February 1898 in the Oxford Light Infantry. He served in the Boer War and became A.D.C. to Major-General Sir William Knox, K.C.B., commanding 34th Brigade 1901-02. After a period of service in India, where he was A.D.C. to the Governor of Bombay, 1904-05, Foljambe retired, in February 1913, to a life as a Justice of the Peace and horse breeder in Leicestershire.

In the Great War he rejoined his regiment, now the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and served with them at Festubert and Loos. He returned to England in 1915 to become second in command of a battalion just being raised, the 21st Battalion K.R.R.C. (Yeoman Rifles). This was a battalion of men, naturally enough drawn from yeomen, that is, sons of owner or tenant farmers. The 21st K.R.R.C. was commanded by Lord Feversham and an intimate social view of this formation of a New Army pals battalion is given by Sir Anthony Eden in his book 'Another World.'

The Yeoman Rifles served on the Somme in 1916 and suffered terrible casualties at Gird Ridge, where the command of the Battalion had devolved on to Foljambe. It was, according to Eden, for this action that Foljambe was awarded the D.S.O. (L.G. 1 January 1918). In January 1917 he was promoted and sent back to England to instruct at a school for commanding officers. Eden had this to say finally of his devotion to Foljambe: ‘he was an admirable choice for the job and he had certainly earned a break, but the battalion and its adjutant were desolate. Foljambe was an excellent trainer of men. As second-in-command and senior regular soldier, he had been chiefly responsible for the battalion's earlier instruction and, since the devastating Somme casualties, it had been his practised hand which patiently and thoroughly reshaped us into an effective fighting unit once again... For myself, I was miserable at parting with the man I so much admired and who taught me all I know. Foljambe's cool, firm efficiency, his intelligent dedication to the job in hand and his refusal to be put off by pretexts, however plausible, set my standards at an impressionable age... ‘

Colonel Foljambe retired from the Army in 1919, succeeded to the title as 3rd Earl of Liverpool in 1941, and died in 1955.