Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War M.C. group of four awarded to Lieutenant T. S. Silby, South Wales Borderers, late Welsh Regiment and Cheshire Regiment, who was killed in action in September 1918

Military Cross, G.V.R., the reverse privately engraved, ‘2nd Lt. T. S. Silby, 10th Bn. S.W.B., Nov. 1917’; 1914-15 Star (14132 Pte. T. S. Silby, Welsh R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. T. S. Silby), the campaign medals in their card boxes of issue, together with the recipient’s Memorial Plaque 1914-18 (Thomas Stanley Silby), in its card sleeve with Buckingham Place message, generally good very fine and better (5) £1000-1200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to Welsh Regiments formed by the Late Llewellyn Lord.

View
Collection

M.C. London Gazette 27 October 1917:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during a hostile raid on an advanced post. Hearing that the commander of his post had been killed, he went forward from the support line under a heavy barrage and took command. He rallied the men at a critical moment and drove off the enemy. He showed great courage, coolness and initiative.’

Thomas Stanley Silby first went to France as a Private in the Welsh Regiment in September 1915, but afterwards served as a Corporal in the Cheshire Regiment.

Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers in November 1916, he returned to France in the 10th Battalion and, having won the M.C. for the above cited deeds at L’Epinette on 19 September 1917, was killed in action on 12 September 1918.

Sold with eight original Great War portrait - or group - photographs, War Office forwarding letter for the campaign medals, dated 14 April 1920, and a photograph of the recipient’s original wooden cross at the New British Cemetery, Gouzeaucourt, as forwarded in a card mount by the Director-General of Graves Registration and Enquiries.