Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Great War pair awarded to Lieutenant Arthur Cyril Ball, Royal Air Force, younger brother of Captain Albert Ball, V.C., D.S.O**, M.C., who was killed in May 1917; Arthur Ball was himself forced down on 5 February 1918 and made Prisoner of War

British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. A. C. Ball R.A.F.); together with 9-carat gold and enamelled past-Lord Mayor’s Badge for the City of Nottingham, hallmarked Birmingham 1936, 53.78g gross weight, the reverse engraved ‘Presented by the City Council to Alderman Sir Albert Ball, Kt., J.P., Lord Mayor of Nottingham, in recognition of his services as Lord Mayor 1935-36. Mayor 1920 (part). Mayor 1909-1910.’, nearly extremely fine (3) £800-£1,200

Arthur Cyril Ball, or Cyril as he was called to differentiate between him and his famous elder brother Albert Ball, V.C., was born in Nottingham on 10 January 1898, son of Albert Ball, a master plumber who, by the turn of the century, changed his profession to become an estate agent in Nottingham, and who also entered local politics, serving four terms as Mayor of Nottingham and being honoured with a knighthood in 1924.

Cyril followed in his elder brother’s footsteps as soon as he was of age, joining the 3/8th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps to train as a pilot. In December 1917, some six months after Albert Ball, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., had been killed on the Western Front, Cyril was posted to France for active service, and joined his brother’s old unit, 60 Squadron, based then at St Marie Cappel, flying SE5As, where he was allotted to ‘A’ Flight.. His Flight Commander, Captain R. L. Chidlaw-Roberts, M.C., said of Cyril, ‘He thought he could carry on like his brother. He was wrong, though full of guts.’ Undoubtedly Cyril Ball felt that as Albert’s brother he had a reputation to live up to, indeed, throughout his life he inevitably suffered ‘comparisons’ with his elder, famous brother, and at times part-resented the continuous comparison.

His fighting career with 60 Squadron lasted only a few weeks. On February 5th, 1918, he flew SE5A B533 as part of a fighting patrol deep into German-held territory, and his engine was hit by a stray sliver of a shell from some desultory anti-aircraft fire. With a dead engine, Cyril turned for home, but at that moment the patrol was jumped by Albatros DV scouts from Jagdstaffel 26, and Cyril was singled out for attack by the veteran Leutnant Otto Esswein. With no alternative open to him, Cyril was forced to land and become a captive of some local German troops. That day he was entertained briefly by the pilots of Jagdstaffel 26, and was then whisked away to a prisoner of war camp for the remaining months of the war.

In December 1918, he was repatriated to England, and returned to his home in Nottingham, where he married his fiancée, Marie Prince, and commenced in business with his brother’s old firm, the Universal Engineering Company in Castle Boulevard. He maintained his interest in aviation to the extent of flying with the local flying club, the Nottingham Aero Club at Hucknall aerodrome. In 1939, he started the Nottingham unit of the Air Defence Cadet Corps, and when this was turned into the Air Training Corps, became the first Wing Commander R.A.F.V.R. (T) of the Nottingham Wing, a post he held until the end of the war. He remained connected with the A.T.C. until his death.

Unlike his father, Cyril had little real ambition in the field of politics, and it was not until November 1947 that he became a city councillor for the Meadows Ward of Nottingham, and was re-elected for the years 1951-54. Only four years later Cyril Ball died on 2 July 1958, in the Nottingham General Hospital after a brief illness.

Throughout his life Albert Ball’s father seldom overlooked any opportunity to perpetuate the memory of his eldest son. As Cyril Ball once remarked, ‘Albert, my brother, hated any kind of show at all. My father loved it; he liked being the father of England’s first real ace.’

These medals, together with those of his brother Captain Albert Ball, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., and his nephew Flight Lieutenant G. A. S. Anderson, were exhibited together at the Nottingham Numismatic Congress of 1960.