Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War M.C. group of three awarded to Lieutenant Thomas Westby, R.M.L.I., 190th Brigade Machine Gun Company, Royal Naval Division, killed in action in December 1917

Military Cross, G.V.R.; British War and Victory Medals, with small M.I.D. oak leaf (2 Lt. T. Westby, R.M.) nearly extremely fine (3) £1800-2200

M.C. London Gazette 18 January 1918, citation 25 April 1918: T/Lieut. Thomas Westby, R.M.L.I., attd. M.G. Co.

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty when in charge of four mobile machine guns. He twice made reconnaissances under heavy fire and disposed his guns with such skill that he achieved his task with negligible casualties.’

Thomas Westby was born at Wath-upon-Dearne, South Yorkshire, on 24 August 1895. He was commissioned from the Inns of Court O.T.C. as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Marine Light Infantry on 10 November 1915, becoming Temporary Lieutenant on 10 November 1916. He served in France and Belgium with the R.M. Brigade from 28 June 1916, transferred to the Machine Gun Company in September, and at the end of the following January was posted to the Machine Gun Base Depot at Camiers. In February 1917 he was posted to the 190th Machine Gun Company, attached to the Royal Naval Division. He was mentioned in despatches for ‘gallant service and devotion to duty’ in France (London Gazette 11 December 1917) and, according to his service record, won the Military Cross for gallantry in Belgium in 1917. He was killed in action on 30 December 1917, and is buried in Metz-en-Couture Communal Cemetery British Extension.