Orders, Decorations and Medals Including five Special Collections

A superbly documented ‘early casualty’ trio to Lieutenant R. K. Ledger, Rifle Brigade, attached Royal Welch Fusiliers

1914 Star (2. Lieut., Rif. Brig.); British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (2. Lieut); together with boxes of issue, original War Office telegrams, fine portrait photograph, contemporary typed copies of letters of condolence, news cuttings, a postcard and letter from the front & other mementos, extremely fine (3) £450-500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of of Great War Medals to the Rifle Brigade.

View
Collection

M.I.D. (posthumous) London Gazette 22 June 1915.

Ralph Kirwood Ledger, son of C.G. Ledger Esq., vicar of Tupsley, Hereford, was educated at Marlborough (where he was a Foundation Scholar) and Wadham College, Oxford. He was captain of the Wadham College Hockey and Lawn Tennis Clubs, and was in command of Wadham O.T.C. He was pursuing a course of theological study at the Bishop’s Hostel, Farnham, when war was declared and he immediately obtained a commission in the Rifle Brigade, Special Reserve, training at Sheppey with the 5th Bn. He crossed to France on 13 November and was disappointed to be posted to the 1st Bn. Royal Welch Fusiliers on 20 November. He wrote home: “The only consolation of parting pro-tem from Rif. Brgde. is that it means seeing some fun.” He was a natural soldier, brave and resourceful. He wrote lengthy letters describing his experiences and these found their way into the columns of the Hereford Times, copies being present. There are also contemp. typed copies of letters of condolence describing his exploits: “I heard what the men said to one another about him when they heard that he was dead… I heard a man say ‘He was the best of them all,’ and that is what I felt, and we all felt it too. Ever since I have known him he has been absolutely untiring, and fearless in doing his duty, and not only his duty, for he has volunteered for everything possible, and not only volunteered, but carried out successfully what he set himself to do. Since he came to the front he has certainly done more reconnaissance work than any other officer in the Battalion. On one occasion he hung the scarf he was wearing on the German barbed wire. During the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, at one time, no one knew where the left of the 21st Brigade was, and your son volunteered to go and find it. He passed along a trench held by about 180 of the North Hants Hussars. He then crawled across a very heavily sniped piece of ground, where there was hardly any trench, into a trench held by the Territorial Camerons, then he went into some trenches held by the Cyclists, he then crawled across the open between where our trenches had been before the taking of Neuve Chapelle and where he thought the left of the 21st Brigade must be. The way he took was sprinkled with dead bodies of those who had tried before him to get across. He got across, and found the 21st Brigade, and returned. I think he was about 7 hours away doing this… It was an awfully plucky thing to do… it would have been easy to say it was impossible… This act was absolutely typical of all his work…” Early on the morning of 13 April 1915 Ledger was sniping from a loophole when he was hit at about 5.15 a.m., “firing his last shot through a loophole before making over the rifle to a Sergeant. One more shot, he said, and that cost him his life.” A little after, Lieut. W.G.C. Gladstone, M.P., was shot: “as he was trying to locate a German sniper, and probably Ledger’s death, of which he knew, made him more than ever keen about this.” Major Dickson wrote to Ledger’s father on 17 April, enclosing a sketch map of the location of their graves: “They were both buried the same evening after dark and the Chaplain read the service. The grave yard is surrounded by barbed wire to protect it and on your son’s grave a cross has been erected with his name on it and flowers and a rose bush have been planted. It will be quite easy to find at any time as it is at the foot of a big pear tree…” Lieut. Gladstone’s body was removed to the family seat at Hawarden on 23 April. This use of privilege caused considerable outcry and no other soldier’s body was allowed to be brought home for the remainder of the war.