Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An emotive Great War group of four awarded to Captain S. Field, Royal Army Medical Corps, who, having been taken P.O.W. in the retreat from Mons, died of typhus at the infamous camp at Wittenberg: had he survived, he would undoubtedly have been awarded the D.S.O. and Life Saving Medal of the Order of St. John in Gold - instead he was posthumously “mentioned” by the Secretary of State for War in 1919

Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Somaliland 1908-10 (Lieut., R.A..M.C.); 1914 Star, with clasp (Capt., R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt.), extremely fine (4) £1200-1500

Harrow Memorials states:

‘Captain S. Field, Royal Army Medical Corps, aged 34, was the third son of George P. Field, Dean of St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, and of Pauline Field. Trained at St. Mary’s Hospital (M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.). Married Margaret Price, and leaves a son and a daughter.

Captain Field joined the R.A.M.C. in 1907, and was promoted Captain in 1910. Served in Somaliland, for which he received the Medal. He was in Ireland when the War broke out and sailed from Dublin early in August 1914, with the first troops that went out. He was taken prisoner while attending to the wounded in a church at Le Cateau, during the retreat from Mons. He was sent to Torgau, thence to Halle, to Burg and finally to Wittenberg in Saxony, when typhus was raging there. After three months he developed fever and died on 10 April 1915. He is said to have volunteered to go to the typhus-stricken camp, and he and the two Medical Officers who were at first with him all died. A sum of money was raised to commemorate their memory, and a memorial was designed to be placed in the Library at Millbank (the R.A.M.C. Headquarters). The design was by Mr. Walker, who also drew up that for Florence Nightingale.

The War Office, however, or an official therein, wrote to say that it was too realistic and would “tend to keep up the resentment against the Germans after the War.” The design was therefore refused, and the only memorial to these three brave men is a small room in the “Star and Garter” at Richmond.’

The full story of the appalling fate that befell many hundreds of P.O.Ws at the camp at Wittenberg, Saxony, between February and April 1915, finally appeared in print in an official report published by H.M.S.O. in April 1916 - Report by the Government Committee on the Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War Regarding the Conditions Obtaining at Wittenberg Camp During the Typhus Epidemic of 1915 (an original copy of the report, under the abbreviated title The Horrors of Wittenberg, published by C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., London, 1916, is included with the Lot). Another account appeared in the Chapter General of the Order of St. John’s Annual Report (for the year ending 31 December 1916), which provides a useful introduction to the conditions met by Field and five other R.A.M.C. officers when they arrived at Wittenberg:

‘On 11 February 1915, Major Fry, Captain Sutcliffe, Captain Field, Major Priestley, Captain Vidal and Lieutenant (now Captain) Lauder, were sent by the German authorities to Wittenberg Camp, whic was occupied by from 15,000 to 16,000 British, Russian, French and Belgian prisoners, amongst whom a typhus epidemic was raging.

On their arrival, they were marched to the camp. They visited the different compounds, and were received in apathetic silence. The rooms were unlighted. Some of the men were marching aimlessly up and down; others were lying on the floor, probably sickening from typhus. The horror of it all was so great that when they got into the open air again one of the doctors broke down ... ’

The report continues:

‘ ... At this time [March 1915], Major Fry and Captain Sutcliffe were dying and Captain Lauder was in the early stages of typhus. Captain Field was attacked by the disease later and also died [in April]. There were then about 1000 cases of typhus in the camp, and fresh cases were coming in at a rate of over fifty a day. At that date there were about 150 British cases. There were no beds for the patients, and not even mattresses for all. Major Priestley saw delirious men waving arms brown to the elbow with faecal matter; they were alive with vermin. In one room the men lay so close to one another that he had to stand across them to examine them. At this time there were no means of obtaining sufficient drugs and dressings, and there was no hospital clothing available for the British prisoners ... ’

Of the demise of Field and his fellow officers, the British Government report of April 1916 concluded:

‘There is no doubt in the minds of the Committee that the conditions to which the camp authorities had reduced the camp and the prisoners they had abandoned was directly responsible for the deaths of these devoted men.’

The same report throws further light on those conditions:

‘The Committee are therefore compelled to look elsewhere for an explanation of the criminal neglect of which, as it seems to them, the German authorities were guilty. And they find it in the history of the administration of Wittenberg Camp from the very commencement. Incredible as it may seem, the action of the officers and guards in precipitately deserting the camp and thenceforth controlling its caged inmates with loaded rifles from the outside, was only in keeping with the methods and conduct of these men throughout.

The cruelty of the administration at Wittenberg Camp from the very commencement has become notorious. Savage dogs were habitually employed to terrorise the prisoners; flogging with a rubber whip was frequent; men were struck with little or no provocation and were tied to posts with their arms above their heads for hours. Captain Lauder reports that many of these men went so far as to look upon typhus, with all its horrors, as a godsend; they preferred it to the presence of the German guards ... The Committee accordingly are forced to the conclusion that the terrible sufferings and privitations of the afflicted prisoners during the period under review are directly chargeable to the deliberate cruelty and neglect of the German officials whose elementary duty it was, in the words of the Geneva Convention, to respect and take care of these men, wounded and sick as they were, without distinction of nationality, but who acted as if neither that Convention nor even ordinary instincts of humanity had any place in their scheme of things ... ’

On 10 January 1919 the following announcement appeared in the London Gazette:

‘The names of the undermentioned have been brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for War for devotion to duty and valuable services rendered by them when prisoners of war, during epidemics of cholera and typhus fever, at the Prisoner of War Camp at Wittenberg, Germany:

Captain S. Field, R.A.M.C. (since deceased)
Major W. B. Fry, R.A.M.C. (since deceased)
Major J. La F. Lauder, D.S.O., M.C., R.A.M.C.
Major H. E. Priestley, C.M.G., R.A.M.C.
Captain A. A. Sutcliffe, R.A.M.C. (since deceased)
Major A. C. Vidal, D.S.O., R.A.M.C.
6927 Private W. J. Rennels, 2/South Lancashires (since deceased)’

As the only surviving officers from the R.A.M.C. team that arrived at Wittenberg in February 1915, Priestley was awarded the C.M.G., and Lauder and Vidal the D.S.O., all of them having been repatriated in early 1916 (London Gazette 18 April 1916 refers). They also each received the Life Saving Medal of the Order of St. John in Gold.

Stephen Field’s remains were re-interred in a grave next to Captain Sutcliffe in the Berlin South-Western (Stahnsdorf) War Cemtery after the War. His last Will and Testament was made at Wittenberg on 7 April 1915, and witnessed by Lauder and Sergeant Rodman of the R.A.M.C. In it, he appears to have left his dog “Tom Jones” to his daughter, Miss Dorothy Field.