Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A well-documented Great War M.C. awarded to Captain C. P. Sells, Royal Army Medical Corps, attached 1/8th Middlesex Regiment

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued, in its case of issue, extremely fine £400-500

M.C. London Gazette 3 June 1918. The following details were forwarded to the recipient’s widow in February 1920:

‘During the period 22 September 1917 to 24 February 1918, this officer has been untiring in performing his duties and tending the wounded, especially during the fighting West of Cambrai, 20 November to 3 December 1917, when he organised his stretcher bearers and personally superintended the evacuation of wounded under an extremely heavy bombardment.’

Clement Perronet Sells enlisted in the 2nd London Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. on the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 and went out to France in January of the following year. After several months, he returned home to complete his medical studies, was commissioned into the R.A.M.C., and went back to France in January 1916, where he participated in the Somme operations. Invalided home with trench fever in October of the same year, Sells returned to the Front in early 1917, when he was attached to the 1/8th Middlesex Regiment. He was subsequently present at Vimy Ridge that April, and went on to win the M.C. for his gallantry in the Cambrai operations at the end of the year. Next taking up an appointment in 83rd Wing, Royal Air Force, Sells was once again invalided home in December 1918 and died as a result ‘of the after effects of trench fever’ at the R.A.F. Hospital Swanage, in July 1919.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including four letters and a postcard written by the recipient while on active service in 1915 (e.g. letter dated 27 February 1915: ‘ ... When a shell is arriving you hear a screaming whistle. If you hear it plainly it is going over. The ones you do not hear are the ones that come near you ...’), one or two of them with enclosed sketches of his billets, and another with a photograph of him and a comrade in their newly issued fur coats during the bitter winter of 1914-15; his pocket notebook for 1915, with diary entries for the period 15 January to 28 April (e.g. entry dated 11 February: ‘ ... At 7.30 p.m. ordered to new hospital nearer cathedral. Just as arriving town shelled. One burst by gymnasium, a bit hitting the roof; two burst by hospital, hitting one of our ambulances and A.D.M.S. car ... Other shells burst in street, one killing three horses and two men in wagon. One killed some Life Guards in their billet ...’); a movement order addressed to ‘Lieutenant Sells, C. P., 2/2 London Fd. Amb., R.A.M.C.’, dated at Madrillet Camp on 7 April 1916, telling him to proceed to the Front to join his unit (and to take two smoke helmets with him); a letter from the Mayor of De Clezentaine, dated 21 November 1918, commending the recipient for his work among the local populace during the flu epidemic; an old carbon copy of a War Office communication dated 13 February 1920, forwarding details of his M.C. citation to his widow; a wartime portrait photograph of the recipient in uniform, and another of his gravestone; two or three newspaper cuttings, including an obituary that confirms that he was married in December 1918; and a small metalled Crucifix.