GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY


George Thomas W. “Tom” Burkett, Lewis’s pilot in the momentous action of 27 July 1917, was gazetted for his M.C. on the very same day as his gallant Observer:


‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. With his patrol he engaged a superior force of enemy machines, and although wounded early in the engagement, continued to fight. He brought down two hostile machines and drove off two more whilst returning to our lines with his own machine badly damaged. In spite of this, however, he succeeded in making a good landing. He displayed splendid dash and coolness under very trying circumstances.’


From Lewis’s correspondence it is possible to chart Burkett’s path of recovery from a base hospital in France back to London Hospital No. 3 at Wandsworth - ‘Burkett seems to be doing well, his wound was quite slight really’. As stated above, at some point during his hospitalisation he was visited by Lewis’s sister, Charlotte, a meeting that led to their marriage. Burkett died in Cumberland in 1952.


Sold with an important series of original (and occasionally transcribed) wartime correspondence (approximately 60 letters and several postcards), mainly from Lewis to his mother and covering the period November 1915, when he first arrived in France with the Royal Fusiliers, right through to 1919, with in fact the vast majority dating from his long period of hospitalisation and accordingly providing a moving personal record of his struggle for survival, but often, too, with news of old squadron friends and commentary on his M.C. (see sample extracts in above biographical entry), many in their original dated envelopes with “Passed Field Censor” red stamps; two letters from Assistant Matron C. R. Townend at No. 8 General Hospital at Rouen, one addressed to the recipient’s mother and the other to his aunt, and both warning of his grave condition (‘ ... he had a gunshot wound in the knee ... we are hoping to save the leg, but, at present, I cannot say definitely how things will go. He had an operation on the knee yesterday and, unfortunately, a haemorrhage today ... I daresay he will make light of his condition but he is very seriously ill ...’); a poignant package of documents (tickets, Aliens Restriction Forms, etc.) relating to several journeys undertaken by Lewis’s mother to France to visit him in hospital, and evidence too of his sister Charlotte having made a similar journey in late September 1917; together with four War Office telegrams reporting on Lewis’s developing condition following the action on 27 July 1917, and several more sent home by his mother during her visits to him in France; his “Active Service Diary” with often detailed entries for the period 13 November 1915 to 16 January 1916; and a framed oil painting of the M.C. action by the aviation artist Barry Weekley.


37


A Great War M.C. group of four awarded to Lieutenant G. M. Gahagan, Royal Engineers


MILITARY CROSS, G.V.R.; BRITISHWAR AND VICTORYMEDALS (Lieut. G. M. Gahagan.); DEFENCEMEDAL, the first three mounted as worn, together with set of tunic ribbons and portrait photograph, nearly extremely fine (4)


£900-1200 M.C. London Gazette 26 July 1918:


‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in demolishing railway bridges in face of the enemy and under heavy fire. When the second bridge was fired by electric exploder, only one charge went off. He ran to the bridge, under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, and lit the safety fuse when the enemy were rapidly approaching, thus successfully destroying it. He and his party had been at these bridges, under heavy fire, for the previous fourteen hours.’


Gerald Michael Gahagan entered the French theatre on 12 October 1916. Sold with copied m.i.c. giving his address in 1924 as Works and Buildings Dept., R.A.F. Ramleh, Palestine.


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