Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An important Great War mining operations M.C. group of four awarded to Captain A. H. Edwards, Monmouthshire Regiment - his Le Touquet mine of March 1915 was the first British one to be blown in the War: having then survived as a Company Commander on the Somme on 1 July 1916, he was wounded in an enemy gas-shell attack at Lys in June 1918

Military Cross, G.V.R., the reverse privately engraved, ‘Capt. A. H. Edwards, 2nd Monmouthshire Regt., France, Feb. 1915, Nov. 22 1916’; 1914 Star, with clasp (Capt., Mon. R.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Major), contact marks, generally very fine (4) £1800-2200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to the Monmouthshire Regiment formed by Lt. Col. P. A. Blagojevic, O. St. J., T.D..

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M.C. London Gazette 23 June 1915.

Mention in despatches London Gazette 22 June 1915 and 25 May 1918.

Arthur H. Edwards, a native of Blaenavon, and a mining engineer by profession, was commissioned into the Monmouthshire Regiment in April 1908. Embarked for active service with the 2nd Battalion in early November 1914, he was appointed to the command of a mining detachment in the following month. The Battalion’s history takes up the story:

‘As has been mentioned earlier, a detachment was drawn from the Battalion in December 1914, for mining operations. It consisted of Captain (afterwards Major) A. H. Edwards, 2 N.C.O’s and 12 men, and was called the 4th Divisional Mining Party. In January it was reinforced by a few men from the 5th South Lancashires.

Work was commenced in conditions which the C.R.E. of the Division described as making mining impossible, and certainly their first mine had to be given up when the trenches in its neighbourhood became waterlogged.

The second mine was successful, however, despite all difficulties. It was commenced from the cellar of a house a few yards behind the front line, the objective being a row of cottages behind the German forward trenches at Le Touquet. These were suspected of being used as billets and known to harbour some troublesome snipers. When about 500 feet of the mine had been dug, the enemy was heard counter-mining. A branch shaft was run about 50 feet in their direction, in which two men were constantly stationed, alternately listening for the enemy and striking stones with an entrenching tool to deceive him. Meanwhile work in the mine proper continued, and it was eventually charged with 30 bags of gunpowder and 24 boxes of gun-cotton and tamped. Then early one morning in March the artillery bombarded for an hour, and at 8 a.m. the mine was fired. Half a dozen of the group of houses went up in the air, and the casualties must have been heavy. This was the first British mine blown in the War.

During the same period the 4th Divisional Mining Party dug a mine from Railway Barricade. The enemy counter-mined and broke on 28 February into the work, and a fierce under-ground hand to hand fight ensued, in which the Germans were eventually worsted. Before evacuating their works they fired a gas grenade, killing one man, the only casulty suffered by the Mining Party.

Captain Edwards received the congratulations of the G.O.C. for the success of the party, and was awarded the M.C., while Sergeant Yates and Privates Lewis and Morgan received the D.C.M.

Soon after this the Mining Party was broken up on the formation of the Tunnelling Companies, and the men returned to the Battalion in time for the battles in May.’

Having been awarded the M.C. for this gallant work - one source stating for his ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty as O.C. of the newly formed 4 Division Mining Party since December 1914, he has directed the very hazardous mining operations with great skill and courage, especially at Le Touquet’ - and been awarded a “mention”, Edwards was also to enjoy a rousing civic reception back at Blaenavon. But these early mining operations did not in fact spell the end of his underground activities for, in August 1915, on the Somme, he was attached to an R.E. Tunnelling Company, with whom he played an important part in destroying an enemy mining attempt in the vicinity of the “Redan” feature - our camouflet was blown-up under theirs, thereby bringing a temporary halt to such work on the part of the enemy. And it was back on the Somme on 1 July 1916 that he stood-by under bombardment in command of ‘A’ Company, his intended objective - having carried grenades up to Beaumont-Hamel - proving impossible to take on account of point-blank machine-gun fire. In point of fact, as verified by his Battalion’s history, Edwards was more or less on constant active service right up until he was wounded in an enemy gas-shell bombardment at Lys in June 1918, having in the interim added a second “mention” to his accolades.