Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War Italy operations M.M. group of three awarded to Private W. J. Riley, Machine Gun Corps

Military Medal, G.V.R. (81402 Pte. - A.L. Cpl. W. J. Riley, 48/M.G.C.); British War and Victory Medals (81402 Pte. W. J. Rilley, M.G.C.), extremely fine (3) £400-500

M.M. London Gazette 29 March 1919.

Walter James Riley enlisted in the Machine Gun Corps at Wandsworth in March 1916, aged 18 years, and was posted to France in February 1917, where he joined No. 144 Company, M.G.C., and was hospitalized with “trench foot” that May. Rejoining his unit a week or so later, he sometime thereafter transferred to the 48th Battalion, M.G.C. in Italy, and most probably won his M.M. for gallant deeds during attacks carried out in the Ave and Sec areas in October 1918; the Battalion had earlier performed well during the Austrian offensive on the Asiago Plateau in June 1918, undergoing a three hour bombardment, including gas shells, on the 15th, the unit’s war diary also referring to a Corporal, the sole survivor of two gun teams that were overwhelmed in the early stages of the attack. Riley was demobilised in March 1919.