Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The unique Somaliland 1920 operations D.C.M. group of five awarded to Acting Quarter-Master Sergeant H. Wood, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment, attached 6th King’s African Rifles

Distinguished Conduct Medal, G.V.R. (305039 Cpl. - A.Q.M. Sjt. H. Wood, 8 Notts. & Derby. R.); 1914-15 Star (1172 L. Cpl., Notts. & Derby. R.); British War and Victory Medals (1172 Cpl., Notts. & Derby. R.); Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Somaliland 1920 (305039 Sjt., Notts. & Derby. R.) contact marks and edge bruising, otherwise very fine (5) £3000-3500

D.C.M. London Gazette 29 November 1920: ‘For gallantry and devotion to duty on 23 January 1920, when during the second attack on the Baran Forts, he volunteered with the demolition party to lay and detonate charges. He subsequently advanced over fire-swept ground and detonated the charges under the wall of an enemy fort, and showed admirable pluck in the performance of a dangerous operation.’

After several failed attempts to capture one of these well-defended strongholds by means of mortar and infantry attack, Colonel Wilkinson, the C.O., agreed to an attempt by Lieutenant George Godfrey to blow up one of the fort’s towers with gun cotton. At 7.45 p.m., under covering machine-gun fire and in company with C.Q.M. Sergeant Wood and four native troops, Godfrey crept up to the eastern tower and succeeded in detonating a 100 lb. charge. There was a terrific explosion but the results of their endeavours were not known until the following day when another patrol entered the near-deserted fort. Its condition was filthy, littered with dead bodies and animals, but quite how many of the former Godfrey and his little party accounted for will never be known, it being ascertained from a prisoner that smallpox had broken out among the Dervishes a few days earlier.

Acting Quarter Master Sergeant Wood’s name was brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for War for distinguished services in Somaliland in the same gazette that announced his D.C.M., the only such award for the Somaliland operations of 1921. Lieutenant Godfrey received the Military Cross for his part in the attack on the Baran Forts, one of four such awards for the campaign.