Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Second Lieutenant F. A. H. Whitfeld, 3rd Battalion Middlesex Regiment, late 28th Battalion London Regiment, killed in action on 23 April 1915

1914 Star (1011 Pte., 1/28 Lond. R.), entitled to the clasp; British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut.); Memorial Plaque (Frederic Ashburnham Hooker Whitfeld) good very fine and better (4) £400-500

Frederic Ashburnham Hooker Whitfeld was born in Southampton on 14 December 1889, the only son of F. H. Militon Whitfeld, Fleet Paymaster, R.N. Educated at Cranleigh, Surrey, he was intended for the accounts Branch of the Royal Navy. However, with no vacancies in prospect he entered into the London & County Bank Head Office and remained there until August 1914. Three years before he had entered the Artist’s Rifles (T.F.) and at the outbreak of war he immediately offered himself for active service. For some time he acted as ‘batman’, in which position his skill in cooking earned him the title, ‘The man who made bully beef unrecognisable’. After a period of time in an officer’s training school in France, he was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant on 15 February 1915 and was attached to the 3rd Battalion Middlesex Regiment as Assistant Machine Gun Officer. He was killed in action on 23 April 1915 while leading his platoon in an attack near St. Julian’s, across a ploughed field, exposed to the fire from eight enemy maxims. It was reported that he advanced with the utmost courage and coolness until he was hit in the jaw and throat, dying instantaneously. His body could not be recovered from the battlefield. His name is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.

One of the 13 survivors of his platoon said of him, ‘He was one of the best officers we ever had ... He was never thinking of himself, but always of us men. He was absolutely fearless and walked about in the middle of the most dangerous duties as if he were at home in England. ... We could go to him about anything, just as if he were our father. When we were trench digging at a most dangerous point in the middle of a battle he went and got us hot tea & rum ... he were as cold as ice, and it was such a brave thing to do ... when he asked for volunteers for anything, the whole platoon would start up as one man’.

In one of his last letters home, he wrote, ‘I do like my job’, and once described the war as, ‘The jolliest rag I was ever in’.

Refs: Bond of Sacrifice Vol. 1, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, The Times. Sold with handwritten extracts from the various sources and a copied photograph.