Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Victory Medal 1914-19 (2) (128410 Gnr. G. Futrill. R.A.; 42465 Gnr. R. T. Spraggs. R.A.) edge bruising to first, nearly very fine and better (2) £60-£80

George Futrill was born at Littleworth North, Worcestershire, on 5 August 1893. A labourer, he attested for the Royal Field Artillery at Hilsea on 23 November 1915 and commenced training in the South West soon thereafter. His Army Service Record records a series of misdemeanours, including a number of apprehensions by civil police in Taunton, Tewkesbury and Dorchester; on the latter occasion, Futrill produced an altered permit and spent the following two weeks in detention for being A.W.O.L.

Sent to France on 10 October 1916, Futrill was later posted to Wimereux with No. 84 Battery, 11th Brigade. Sometime recorded as sick, he suffered a severe shoulder injury on 4 May 1917 and was evacuated home per H.S. St Patrick. A month later, Futrill’s military career came to a sudden halt whilst poaching:
‘States - On June 16, 1917, I was out with my ordinary sporting gun, when going through a hedge a branch caught the trigger causing me blowing 3 fingers off my left hand. I went home to Barracks Hospital and was admitted and detained.’

Transferred to the Labour Corps, Futrill spent the remainder of the War with the 569th Home Service Employment Company. He later worked as a gardener and is recorded in 1939 as a patient of the Hayley Green Hospital which at that time specialised in the treatment of tuberculosis.

Richard Thomas Spraggs was born in Portsmouth around 1885 and worked as a monumental mason and labourer. He attested for the Royal Garrison Artillery on 18 August 1914 in London, but his Army Service Record shows that his time in the Army was limited due to health issues which had plagued him since 1908; the recipient of ‘mercurial treatment’ - which at that time consisted of pills with the potential to poison and sometimes kill individuals - he was discharged from Depot on 31 July 1917.

Returned home to 17 Harwich Place, Blackheath, Spraggs likely spent much of the 1920s employed in the construction of war memorials and sites of remembrance across the country.