Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

A fine Great War Somme 1916 operations M.M. group of four awarded to Sergeant P. Henry, Canadian Army Medical Corps

Military Medal, G.V.R. (32856 Cpl. P. Henry, 1/F.A. Can. A.M.C.); 1914-15 Star (23856 Pte., Can. A.M.C.), note first two digits of number reversed; British War and Victory Medals (32856 Sjt., C.A.M.C.), mounted as worn, together with related Canadian Memorial Cross, the reverse officially inscribed, ‘32856 Sgt. P. Henry, M.M.’, generally good very fine (5) £500-600

M.M. London Gazette 9 December 1916. The original recommendation states:

‘For conspicuous bravery in taking bearer parties repeatedly into Courcelette, and to Aid Posts on the 25th, 26th and 27th September 1916, and being frequently exposed to severe shell-fire and rifle fire. His tireless work and example to his men were of great service during these three days.’

Percy (Archibald) Henry was born at Victoria West, Prince Edward Island, in April 1893 and enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps at Quebec in September 1914. As part of the “First Canadian Contingent”, he was embarked for England that October, and, in July 1915, arrived in France, being attached as a Lance-Corporal to the 1st Canadian Field Ambulance, 1st Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division.

Advanced to Corporal in November of the same year, family records state that Henry on one occasion accompanied his C.O., believed to be a Lieutenant-Colonel E. M. Stone, into No Man’s Land, in order to recover some wounded men, and that Stone was badly wounded and Henry carried him back to our trenches through knee-deep mud, while under fire - an experience that would cause him nightmares for the rest of his life. More certain is that Henry carried out similar acts of bravery at Fleres-Courcelette on the Somme in September 1916, deeds that won him the M.M. (see above recommendation).

In the following month, Henry sustained a serious abdominal wound when, on returning to our trenches under fire after another mission in No Man’s Land, he jumped over the parapet and landed on a fixed bayonet, a rifle having been left carelessly propped up against the side of the trench.

He was evacuated to England and underwent treatment at the Lord Derby War Hospital, and, after making a ‘miraculous recovery’, was posted to the Canadian Forestry Corps H.Q. at Stirling in Scotland.

Advanced to Sergeant in July 1917, Henry was discharged back in Canada, at Quebec, in August 1919, and, as a result of complications caused by his old wound, died at the Portsmouth U.S. Naval Hospital at Kittery, Maine in December 1938, aged 45 years.