Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Africa General Service 1902-56, with suspension bar but lacking suspension rod and clasp [Somaliland 1901], (Lieut: L. Murray, Somali Levy.) officially engraved naming, good very fine £400-£500

Provenance: Baldwin’s auction, November 2001. Murray received a new medal when he qualified for the clasp ‘Kissi 1905’. This second medal also had the clasp ‘Somaliland 1901’ and is named to him as a Captain in the Sierra Leone Battalion W.A.F.F. It was sold together with his Great War D.S.O. group as part of the Julian Johnson Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, March 2017, and previously as part of the Mike Minton Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, December 1994.

Leslie Murray was born on 29 February 1878 and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the East Surrey Regiment on 25 August 1897, being made Lieutenant in 1899. He served in East Africa in the operations in Somaliland 1901, under Captain M. MacNeill, including the attack on the zariba at Samala on 2/3 June 1901, when the Mullah’s forces were driven off with the loss of 600 men killed and wounded (Medal with clasp). Promoted to Captain in 1904 he next took part in the operations in West Africa with the Kissi Field Force, March to June 1905, being one of only 16 British officers to receive the medal with this clasp (Note: It is apparent that Murray received a new medal for this expedition, having already received one for the Somaliland operations of 1901. A medal disc only named ‘Lieut. L. Murray, Somali Levy’ was sold by Baldwin’s Auctions in November 2001).

Murray retired from the East Surrey’s on 3 June 1914 but was appointed a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, with whom he served in France and Italy from 21 November 1915, in command of the 14th Battalion. He was wounded by shrapnel during an advance at Nieppe in 1918 (Despatches three times, D.S.O.).