Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: attributed to Lieutenant-Colonel J. A. M. Ellison-Macartney, King’s Royal Rifle Corps: he commanded the Queen Victoria’s Rifles in the gallant defence of Calais in 1940, was taken P.O.W. and subsequently mentioned in despatches

1939-45 Star; War Medal 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf; Coronation 1953; Territorial Efficiency Decoration, G.VI.R., with 3 Bars, all of them, like the reverse of the Decoration, officially dated ‘1951’, together with a Q.V.R’s cap badge, mounted entirely as worn, very fine and better (5) £250-300

John Arthur Mowbray Ellison-Macartney was born in March 1903, the son of the Rt. Hon. William Ellison-Macartney, who later became Governor of Tasmania (1913-17) and Governor of Western Australia and its Dependencies (1917-20) and a K.C.M.G.

Young John was educated in Tasmania and at Eton, and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the 9th London Regiment (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) in April 1923. On the disbandment of the London Regiment in 1936, the 9th Battalion was re-enrolled as a motorcycle infantry unit and transferred to the administration of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

Having been advanced to Lieutenant-Colonel in August 1939, Ellison-Macartney commanded the Q.V.R. at the defence of Calais in May 1940. But his unit’s strength was seriously depleted when the War Office shamefully requisitioned its 22 scout-cars on the eve of embarkation, a shortcoming further compounded by another order to sail without any transport at all. As Ellison-Macartney later put it, ‘The Battalion left for Calais, shorn of its mobility and customary means of communication. It fought in a role divorced from its training and practice: it dived straight into battle.’ And in common with the regular Battalions the 60th Rifles and the Rifle Brigade, found itself fighting against impossible odds: one of the more memorable stories to circulate P.O.W. camps after the fall of France was that concerning a French coastal gun hastily brought into action by the men of the Q.V.R. - the barrel fell off when it was fired for the first time in anger at an advancing German tank, causing a ‘roar of laughter from the Q.V.R. that rose along the northern rampart’; see The Flames of Calais, by Airey Neave, among other sources, for a full account of the Q.V.R. in this desperate and costly battle.

Like the vast majority of those lucky enough to survive it, Ellison-Macartney spent the remainder of the war as a P.O.W., finally gaining his freedom on the arrival of advanced elements of the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division at the gates of Oflag 12B at Hadamar, Germany in April 1945 - Hadamar’s nearby Psychiatric Hospital had been used as part of the Nazi regime’s euthanasia programme. Mentioned in despatches on his return home, ‘In recognition of gallant and distinguished service in the defence of Calais in May 1940’ (London Gazette 20 September 1945 refers), Ellison-Macartney returned to civilian life, latterly gaining a C.B.E., Civil Division for his services as Chairman of the Board of Governors, St. John’s Hospital for Diseases of the Skin (London Gazette 13 June 1965 refers). The Colonel died at Rustington, West Sussex in October 1985.