Medals 25 Mar 13

GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY 1197

A good Great War M.C. group of six awarded to Acting Captain J. Caven, Royal Scots Fusiliers, late King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a veteran of the Gallipoli operations, in which was wounded

MILITARY CROSS, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; 1914-15 STAR (2120 Sjt. J. Caven, K.O. Sco. Bord.); BRITISHWAR AND VICTORY MEDALS (Capt. J. Caven); DEFENCEMEDAL 1939-45; TERRITORIAL FORCE EFFICIENCYMEDAL, G.V.R. (2120 Sjt. J. Caven, 5/K.O.S.B.), contact marks and a little polished, otherwise generally very fine (6)

£1000-1200 M.C. London Gazette 16 September 1918:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during an enemy attack. He organised parties for dealing with the advanced enemy machine-guns and took them forward in front of his trench. He succeeded in making these advanced posts withdraw from positions where they were inflicting heavy casualties.’

John Caven, who was born in Dalbeattie, Kirkudbright, originally enlisted in the Galloway Rifle Volunteer Corps in January 1903, aged 17 years, but was embodied in the 1/5th (Dumfries & Galloway) Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, Territorial Force, in April 1908.

And it was in the latter capacity, as a Sergeant, that he was landed on V-Beach in Gallipoli under heavy shellfire on the night of 6 June 1915. Short of bombs, the Battalion was quickly employed in the manufacture of “Jam Tin Bombs” and went into action at Achi Baba Nullah on 12 July, when the ‘sunlight sparkled on the bayonets and on the little slips of tin which every man carried on his back as a guide to our artillery’. Heavy casualties were incurred passing over the features known as Mercer Road, Trotman Road (a support trench) and Parson Road, one private soldier recalling how his comrades ‘fell like corn below the scythe’, and among them Caven, who received a serious head wound. Fortunate to be rescued from the battlefield, where 82 of his comrades were killed and another 187 wounded, he was evacuated to Alexandria, and thence to England in the Asturias.

On returning to regimental duty, he was employed as an instructor, and was awarded his T.F.E.M. in AO 124 of 1916.

Subsequently commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers in June 1917, Caven went out to France that October, where he joined the 2nd Battalion and won the M.C. in the following year, quite probably in connection with the German Spring Offensive - the 2nd Battalion suffered heavily during fighting on the River Lys.

Demobilised in November 1919, he appears to have settled in Leeds, and was onetime Secretary of the “Yorkshire Jocks”, in addition to serving as President of the K.O.S.B. Association; sold with research.

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