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

A Great War Somme 1916 operations M.M. group of four awarded to 2nd Lieutenant W. Bullock, Shropshire Light Infantry

Military Medal, G.V.R. (16024 Sjt. W. Bullock, 5/Shrops. L.I.); 1914-15 Star (16024 Pte. (A. Sjt.), Shrops. L.I.); British War and Victory Medals (2 Lieut.), very fine or better (4) £400-450

M.M. London Gazette 9 December 1916.

William Bullock enlisted in the Shropshire Light Infantry at Blackburn in November 1914, aged 19 years, and arrived in France with the 5th Battalion in mid-October 1915, in the rank of Acting Sergeant. His subsequent award of the M.M. undoubtedly reflected gallant deeds on the Somme in August and September 1916, not least in his Battalion’s costly attacks against Delville Wood.

Bullock proceeded home in December 1916 as a “Candidate for a Commission”, and was duly appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th Shropshires in May 1917. He subsequently rejoined his old unit in the Ypres Salient that August, on the eve of the battle of Passchendaele, and was taken P.O.W. on 22 March 1918 during the German “Spring Offensive”. Repatriated on 18 December 1918, Bullock was released in the rank of Lieutenant in October 1919.