Special Collections

Sold on 2 April 2004

1 part

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A Collection of Medals to the 13th Regiment and Somerset Light Infantry

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Lot

№ 361

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2 April 2004

Hammer Price:
£220

Pair: Major C. A. Williams, Somerset Light Infantry, who held temporary command of the 2nd Battalion in Afghanistan in 1919

British War Medal 1914-20
(Lt. Col.); India General Service 1908-35,1 clasp, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919 (Capt., 2/Som. Lt. Infy.), mounted as worn, together with a pair of regimental badges, contact marks and polished, otherwise generally very fine (4) £180-220

Cecil Arnold Williams was born in March 1888 and was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry as a 2nd Lieutenant in April 1908. Posted to the 2nd Battalion, he remained in India for the duration of the Great War and was the recipient of a single British War Medal 1914-20; during this period, although only a substantive Captain, he once held the rank of Acting Lieutenant-Colonel.

Williams again attained the rank of Acting Lieutenant-Colonel in the Afghanistan operations of 1919, when he was present at the 2nd Battalion’s engagement in the hills at Bagh on 11 May. On that occasion his C.O. was wounded and he assumed temporary command of the Battalion until the end of the month, a period that witnessed the gallant assault on “Stonehenge Ridge” - subsequently renamed “Somerset Hill”. He again became temporary C.O. that August and brought the Battalion back to India.

Williams became a substantive Major in August 1927 and retired in the 1930s.