Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A post-War ‘Diplomatic Wireless Service’ M.B.E. group of six awarded to Mr Arthur Halestrap, late Sapper, Royal Engineers, afterwards Royal Signals and Special Operations Executive, one of the last surviving British soldiers of the First World War who died in 2004, aged 105

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Civil) Member’s 2nd type breast badge, silver; British War and Victory Medals (316620 Spr. A. Halestrap. R.E.); Defence and War Medals 1939-45; France, Fifth Republic, Order of the Legion of Honour, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamels, the first five mounted as worn, very fine or better (6) £300-£500

M.B.E. London Gazette 8 June 1963: ‘Arthur Halestrap, Esq., Senior Executive Officer, Foreign Office.’

Arthur Halestrap was born in Southampton on 8 September 1898. In his youth he walked the decks of the Titanic before she sailed. He tried to enlist in the British armed forces shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. His request was refused on account of his youth. However, in September 1916, he joined the Royal Engineers Signal Division and was sent to France in January 1918. After the First World War, Halestrap was employed by the Trans-Oceanic department of Marconi and worked with Cyril Evans, who had been the Californian’s wireless operator on the night of the Titanic disaster. At this time he was living in Black Notley in Essex with his wife Gladys Gwendoline.

In the Second World War, he was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Signals. From 1942, he was seconded to the Special Operations Executive, which had been established to support the Resistance movements in German-occupied Europe and to carry out acts of sabotage. He did not leave England, however, and at one point was the chief signals officer at Grendon Underwood, one of the principal centres for communication with S.O.E. agents on the Continent.

At the end of the war in Europe, Halestrap went to Germany as a member of the Allied Control Commission, but after a motor accident he returned to England to join the Diplomatic Wireless Service. In 1963 he was appointed M.B.E. for his work with this organisation, from which he retired in 1970 at the age of 72.

For the last 20 years of his life he attended the memorial service for the fallen of the First World War at the Menin Gate, and in 1988 he received the French Legion of Honour in company with all the small band of surviving veterans who had fought in France in 1914-18. He kept in touch with the former comrades in the S.O.E., attending the reunions of the Henley Signals Unit whenever possible.

He continued to appear on television documentaries into his extremely old age. In 2003, aged 105, he was the only British veteran of the First World War to attend the Armistice Day Ceremony in Ypres, where he rose from his wheelchair and, in a clear and strong voice, recited Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’. Along with Harry Patch and a few others, he was featured in the 2003 television series World War 1 in Colour as well as the Last Tommy on B.B.C. 1 after his death in 2005.

His wife, son and daughter all predeceased him. His son John, a 20-year old R.A.F. navigator, was killed within two months of the end of the Second World War. Arthur Halestrap died on 1 April 2004, in Kings Sutton, Northamptonshire, where he had moved to in the 1960s.