Orders, Decorations and Medals

A well-documented East Africa and Great War campaign group of four awarded to Squadron Leader M. G. B. Copeman, Royal Air Force, late Leicestershire Regiment and Royal Flying Corps, onetime attached King’s African Rifles - his hitherto unpublished journal covering operations in East Africa 1912-14, and in particular the Dodinga Expedition, is an important addition to the K.A.R’s history in this period; so, too, his equally detailed manuscript covering the actions of the 1st Battalion, Leicesters in France & Belgium 1914-15

Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, East Africa 1913 (Lieut. M. G. B. Copeman, 4/K.A.R.); 1914 Star (Capt. M. G. B. Copeman, Leic. R.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. M. G. B. Copeman, R.F.C.), together with a set of related miniature dress medals (the Africa General Service with clasp dated 1913-14 and 1914 Star with clasp), R.F.C. cap badge and British Legion lapel badge, the whole contained within an attractive glazed display frame, generally very fine or better (10) £600-800

Martin George Byard Copeman, who married (Winifrid) Ianthe, daughter of Captain John William Clayton, late 13th Light Dragoons, in 1919 (see Lot 869), was born in Aylsham, Norfolk in March 1885. Educated at Hurstpierpoint College, he originally chose teaching as his profession, but, having also joined the Militia as a subaltern in May 1905, eventually decided upon soldiering as a full time career. Having then passed his examination for a regular commission in October 1906, he joined the 1st Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant in April of the following year.

East Africa and fighting the Dodinga, 1913

Advanced to Lieutenant in September 1909, Copeman was seconded for service in the King’s African Rifles in September 1911, initially with an appointment in the 1st Battalion, but subsequently in the 4th. Taking passage in the S.S. Dunvegan, he arrived at Kilindini on the east coast of Africa in early October, and remained actively employed in that region until returning to the U.K. in March 1914. And as confirmed by Richard Magor in African General Service Medals, he served as a Column Commander - No. 1 Column with 60 Riflemen and a Maxim - during the operations against the Dodinga Tribe in June-August 1913, an expedition that entered hitherto unexplored territory, without any prior reconnaissance. Magor continues:

‘Initially surprise was achieved at the first village and some tribesmen were killed and stock captured.

On the second day of the expedition all three columns began driving the hills, over an area of 24 square miles. As the land was intersected by deep gullies and the forest was heavy, the country was ideal for ambushes and defensive tactics and the Dodinga soon overcame their initial surprise and fought back. Their tactics were to ambush from close quarters, and for arms each tribesman carried five or six spears. With these tactics by day, and with night attacks on the bomas containing the captured cattle, Captain Brook’s force must have had a roughish time, particularly when it came to extricating his force together with 2,000 cattle and 10 badly wounded men to Madial, and their withdrawal met with constant attacks.

The force was back at its base at Madial on 7 August with 2,037 head of cattle, 1,660 goats and 62 donkeys. The force had lost three killed and 10 men wounded, but the Dodinga remained successfully subdued.

The roll shows 256 entitled to the clasp from 4th K.A.R.’

To this summary of events may now be added Copeman’s hitherto unpublished account of the operations, as per his East African journal (see below), an extremely entertaining and informative manuscript with frequent mention of fellow officers - thus his meeting with Captain W. T. Brooks, the expedition’s C.O., and Captain R. H. Leeke, another Column Commander, on 12 June, to ‘talk over the Dodinga operations scheme and make arrangements’, and his subsequent description of those operations. Of his first combat after a night march, Copeman writes:

‘Final stage completed by night march on 18th-19th [June], starting at midnight and pushing our way through bamboo forest with no path. Reached the foot of the hills at about 4 a.m., left porters behind and made for the villages, getting close up as daylight came. The natives were completely surprised and fled after a slight resistance, and we took 400 head of cattle, 200 goats, three tusks and 24 donkeys. Burnt villages and camped on top of hills near stream.’

As also confirmed by Copeman’s journal, however, the Dodinga rallied quickly, one of his advance parties being ambushed on the 25th, when ‘about 200 Dodinga sprung up from about ten yards away where they had been hiding - they hurled spears and killed one soldier and two Logira natives, and wounded two other soldiers.’ A few nights later, Copeman’s camp was attacked, one of his Logira sentries being killed. Then, on making his way to join up with Brooks’ column, he ran into a well-executed ambush:

‘The Dodinga laid a most successful ambush at a part of the road which it is impossible to reconnoitre except at close quarters, and they hurled spears from five yards range. We were moving in close order with rifles loaded, so they didn’t stay long, but we were very lucky not to lose more men, as they were at least 60 to 100 Dodinga, perhaps more. The undergrowth was too thick to see - even to count the dead - and they were over the edge of the gully directly their spears were thrown. The Sergeant was about 20 yards behind me and he shot two men after he was hit, though the spear cut an artery and he died almost immediately afterwards. After signalling Brooks, I joined him next day - another bad march. Some firing but no casualties.’

According to Copeman, Brooks was inexperienced in such operations, and prone to go by the book, but at length, ‘strategy and the rules of war were allowed to take second place to common sense and the needs of the situation’, and the campaign was successfully concluded. Nonetheless, Copeman thought it was unlikely that 4/K.A.R’s recent services would be officially recognised - in the event an ill-founded fear in lieu of official approval for the clasp “East Africa 1913”:

‘This half-company has been engaged in almost continual operations during nearly two years, not always such severe operations as those against the Dodinga, but severe enough to give them some very hard work and to place them frequently in positions of danger. And yet, for all this, there seems little chance of a Medal being given for any of this fighting, which is apparently looked upon by the authorities at the Colonial Office and, to a certain extent, at Bombo, as mere child’s play. But if a Medal is earned for active service and the endangering of life, I fail to see what warfare could surpass this. It also seems to me that to be behind a breastwork and fire at the enemy 1500 to 2000 yards away, is less impressive than to seize cattle from out of the hands of natives and drive them out of the hostile country, with the natives waiting at every likely place to make an attack; and even though spears are the usual weapon employed, 200 or 300 men with spears at 10 yards range are a good deal more formidable to our little detachments of 20 or 30 men, than a force equal in numbers to ours, of trained troops with rifles.’


France & Belgium 1914-15

Having returned to the U.K. in early 1914, Copeman took leave in Canada, and was advanced to Captain on the eve of hostilities in 1914. Quickly recalled to the Leicesters, he was embarked for France with the 1st Battalion in early September, and first went into the front line on the 20th, when the Battalion relieved the 2nd Royal Irish in trenches near Vailly. Fortunately for posterity’s sake, Copeman somehow found time to keep another very detailed journal of these operations, not least in regard to the frantic fighting around the Rue du Bois on the 25 October 1914, fighting in which the Battalion sustained losses of four officers and 47 other ranks killed, five officers and 134 other ranks wounded, and another 106 posted missing - his journal contains nominal rolls of other ranks under his command, and their fate, including reference to two or three of them having subsequently been awarded the D.C.M.

Notwithstanding such casualties, Copeman and his comrades were actively engaged on front line duties for the remainder of the year, a moment’s respite being an inspection carried out by H.M. the King at Bac St. Maur on 2 December, and the famous “Christmas Truce”, of which his journal has a lengthy description - ‘Much regretted my inability to speak German as I could have learnt a lot.’

New year’s day 1915 found the Leicesters back in the trenches at Rue to Bois, Copeman’s journal continuing to describe in detail his Battalion’s movements - he was now in acting command of ‘A’ Company. Hospitalised as a result of influenza in late February, he was nonetheless back in the trenches by early March, his journal noting that two recent death sentences for desertion were read out to all and sundry, and, more typically, on the 19th, ‘Company barricade was shelled. About 15 shells. One man killed. Corporal Daft. I held the funeral at 3 a.m.’ Shortly thereafter, on 1 April, Copeman nearly met a similar fate, when badly wounded by a grenade - dropped by a nervous Private on the point of throwing it - and it was impossible to evacuate him to a Field Ambulance until darkness fell:

‘However, the time passed, and it was very good for me, because I realised for the first time how miserable it is for a wounded man to be left out in the field and how necessary it is to send him to hospital as soon as possible; V.Cs for bringing in the wounded are well-earned - I used to think they were cheap. Every officer ought to know what it feels like to be wounded. About 6 p.m. they put me on a stretcher and humped me back to the railway line, about 100 yards behind the trenches, and I said “au revoir” to ‘A’ Company men on the way; then I was put on a trolley and pushed up the line with bullets buzzing overhead ... ’

Copeman had sustained multiple wounds, and was operated on at Boulogne, where ‘the R.A.M.C. orderlies stole my kit’. Luckily, his Surgeon was more compassionate, ‘apparently saving my arm which was becoming sceptic,’ and within a few days he was able to write his first ‘few words with the left hand, to let people at home know I was all right’ - his journal’s “post-action” report was also written with his left hand. In the interim, he had resided at Lady Ridley’s Hospital at 10, Carlton House Terrace, London, where he found himself surrounded by ‘delightful nurses, and my happiness was complete.’


Further active service in the Royal Flying Corps 1917

While recuperating in London that September, he met an officer who had joined Royal Flying Corps, the latter suggesting he should do the same. And so it proved, Copeman graduating from the Central Flying School at Upavon in May 1916 (Certificate No. 1301), soon after which he joined No. 25 Squadron in France, a short-lived appointment in lieu of him being badly concussed in a flying accident that July. He was invalided home.

Posted in due course to No. 1 Auxiliary School of Air Gunnery at Hythe, Kent, he became incensed with an interfering C.O. and requested a posting back to his old squadron in France, a wish that was duly granted in May 1917, when on the 31st he carried out his first operational sortie, a line patrol over Loos. And as per his handwritten record of subsequent flights (see below), Copeman remained actively employed with No. 25 Squadron until early July, notching up many sorties.

June witnessing the commencement of the Messines offensive, his sorties were either of a photo-reconnaissance or bombing nature, a case in point being a raid on Lille aerodrome on the 7th, when his Observer engaged an enemy aircraft and the “archie” was sufficiently heavy to damage his own. Poignantly, among the papers inserted in Copeman’s R.F.C. journal is an original letter from fellow pilot 2nd Lieutenant G. H. Pollard, the accompanying envelope inscribed, ‘If I am killed or missing open this and kindly oblige’, the letter leaving instructions for his kit to be sent to his wife - Pollard and his Observer, 2nd Lieutenant F. S. Ferriman, failed to return from the Lille raid. And judging by Copeman’s descriptions of combat and “archie” over the coming weeks, he was lucky not suffer a similar fate - instead, his aircraft crashed at the end of the aerodrome on taking off for a mission on 7 July, he and his Observer being thrown clear of the wreckage and swept off to hospital.

On recovery, Copeman was posted to 52 Training Squadron at Catterick, and remained employed in the U.K. until the end of hostilities, latterly with an appointment at the Air Ministry. Granted a permanent commission as a Squadron Leader in August 1919, his career took a turn for the worse when he accused the authorities of sentencing his brother, Lieutenant J. Y. Copeman, Leicestershire Regiment, to death - the latter, recovering from pneumonia, had been sent an erroneous order to rejoin his Battalion. Such was the tone of Copeman’s letter of intervention to the Director of Medical Services at Colchester - copies included - that Field Marshal Earl Haig concluded ‘it would not be in the best interests of discipline to pass the matter over.’ Banished to the Middle East, where he commanded an Armoured Car Company in Egypt, he appears to have resigned his commission around 1923.

As for the rest, Copeman wrote in March 1939, from Kaimosi, Kenya, ‘I succeeded eventually in returning to Africa, which I felt was the place where I ought to live’. And there he remained until his death in February 1942, having, it is assumed, attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the local defence forces - or certainly according to a forwarding letter for his National Service Emblem (see below).





ACCOMPANYING ARCHIVE

Sold with the recipient’s diaries or journals, namely six separate volumes covering the periods April to December 1902; September 1904 to December 1907, and thus his early career in the Leicesters; August 1911 to May 1914, the period of his attachment to the King’s African Rifles in East Africa, about 190pp., both sides used with detailed handwritten entries in ink, and accordingly an important manuscript for the 1913 operations and K.A.R. history generally, many personalities and fellow officers being the subject of his - sometimes scathing - observations; another extensive volume covering the period October 1914 to September 1915, being an Army Book 152 (Field Service), about 90pp., both sides used with handwritten entries in pencil, including trench maps, nominal rolls and commentary on Honours & Awards, and accordingly an important manuscript in terms of early operations carried out by the Leicestershire Regiment in France & Belgium; a contemporary handwritten copy of his Flying Log Book entries for the period May to July 1917, contained in an Army Book 135, about 10pp., with full operational commentary, together with inserted wartime newspaper cuttings and telegrams; and a Letts’ diary for 1919, the earlier entries of R.A.F. career interest.

Together with two letters home to family, written while employed in 4/K.A.R., dated 14 February 1913 (‘Northern Patrol, Uganda’), and 22 September 1913 (’Bombo, Uganda’); his Royal Flying Corps (Officers) Certificate ‘A’, Central Flying School, Upavon, dated 20 May 1916; Air Ministry forwarding letter for his British War & Victory Medals, dated 28 December 1922; and Government House, Nairobi ‘National Service Emblem’ forwarding letter, dated 25 October 1940, addressed to Lt. Col. M. Copeman, Kaimosi, P.O. Kisumu.’