Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A scarce 'Plymouth Brethren' non-combatant Great War pair awarded to Sapper E. K. Richards, Royal Engineers, who served his country from behind the lines using his woodworking skills

British War and Victory Medals (224660 Spr. E. K. Richards. R.E.) nearly extremely fine (2) £70-£90

Edwin Kelcey Richards was born in Folkestone in 1898. Not long out of school, his Army Service Record records him living with his parents at 50 Broadmead Road, Folkestone, Kent. It also notes him as an active member of the Plymouth Brethren.

According to historian Elisabeth Wilson in The Eyes of the Authorities are Upon Us: The Brethren and World War I, the outbreak of the Great War ‘took the Brethren by surprise, and forced many of them to examine their views on the state afresh... There was private agonising over decisions, and some public debate and disagreement.’ Alongside Quakers, Christadelphians and Jehovah’s Witnesses, many refused to take up arms, and this in turn resulted in a large number of military tribunals; those who found enlistment acceptable were soon deployed as stretcher bearers and despatch riders, but those who refused to co-operate or faced unsympathetic magistrates were swiftly and harshly dealt with. Wilson notes, ‘there were usually forty or fifty brethren from Open assemblies in Dartmoor (prison) at any one time.’

Keeping strongly to his core belief, ‘thou shalt not kill’, an 18-year old Richards elected for a non-combatant role in the Royal Engineers. Attesting at Canterbury on 4 January 1917, he was rated 'proficient carpenter' and sent to the 403rd 2/1st Highland Field Company at Drayton. Posted to France on 2 July 1918, he was raised Acting 2nd Corporal with the British Army of the Rhine on 23 September 1919, before proceeding to dispersal at Bonn with 218th Field Company, Royal Engineers, on 7 February 1920.