A fine Passchendaele casualty trio to Captain B.W. Edwards, Rifle Brigade

1914-15 Star (PS-683 Sjt., Middx. R.); British War and Victory Medals, with miniature M.I.D. oak leaf (Capt.) nearly extremely fine (3) £340-380

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of of Great War Medals to the Rifle Brigade.

View
Collection

M.I.D. (posthumous) London Gazette 18 December 1917

Bernard Wallace Edwards was educated at Acton Commercial College and was employed as a clerk in the India Office. He enlisted in the 16th (Public Schools) Bn., Middlesex Regiment in September 1914 and was promoted Corporal in March and Sergeant in September 1915. He served with the B.E.F. in France November 1915-April 1916 when he was posted home to an Officer Cadet Battalion. He was commissioned in the Sussex Regiment in August 1916 but immediately transferred to the Rifle Brigade and joined the 10th (S) Bn. in France the same month. In December 1916 he was promoted to Captain, commanding a company. He was Killed in Action 14 August 1917 during the battle for Langemarck. The battalion advanced before dawn in heavy rain over 250 yards of open ground, being machine-gunned and shelled as they went, to the swamped Steenbeeck, a morass of liquid mud. Trench bridges they carried with them were too short to cross it but they managed to wade through and engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with German machine-gun posts in shell holes on the far bank before assaulting the Au Bon Gite, a substantial concrete pillbox. Au Bon Gite was eventually outflanked but the German locked themselves in and continued the fight. By this time all four company commanders had been killed. Edwards was posthumously Mentioned In Despatches in Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatch of 7 November 1917 and it is probable that he led the assault on Au Bon Gite himself. The history of the 20th Division states that he was killed attacking a pill box. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

Sold with photocopies of Memorial Scroll, War Office letter re Mention in Despatches and portrait obtained from a family source.