Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Black Watch, The Wauchope Medal for Gallantry, silver, the reverse inscribed (Pte. T. Miller, for Conspicuous Gallantry in the Battle beyond Bagdad, March 14, 1917. Presented by Colonel A. G. Wauchope) with silver loop suspension and ribbon in regimental colours, good very fine and rare £400-500

Awarded to 11337 Private Thomas Miller, 2nd Battalion, Black Watch.

The 2nd Battalion, Black Watch, was commanded by Colonel A. G. Wauchope at the Battle of Mushaidie, 14 March, 1917, when the regiment almost singlehanded captured a position that others had found too hard to assault. Despite suffering a casualty rate of some 40 percent, the victory at Mushaidie stands out as the finest achievement of the Battalion in the war. The Corps Commander wrote to Colonel Wauchope: “I was indeed pleased with the attack by your regiment on the 14th. It was a fine determined attack and I think you can rank it as one of the red-letter days in the diary of your regiment during the war. You fairly routed the enemy.”

Colonel Wauchope was eager to give a mark of recognition to those who greatly distinguished themselves in battle. He therefore ordered a medallion to be specially struck, and gave this to non-commissioned officers and men who had been recommended for gallantry in action. Colonel Wauchope gave sixty of these medals, mostly to men who had been recommended for gallantry after the battles of Loos and Mushaidie - the Battle beyond Baghdad - and ten others to men who had specially distinguished themselves scouting in No Man’s Land. Two examples of this medal were sold in the Samson Collection, Glendining’s, June 1991.