Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War M.C. awarded to Acting Lieutenant-Colonel B. Barnes, 15th London Regiment attached Machine Gun Corps

Military Cross, G.V.R., reverse inscribed, ‘Vimy, 21.V.16, Capt. Bernard Barnes, 15th Bn. London Regt.’, in case of issue, extremely fine £340-380

M.C. London Gazette 24 June 1916. ‘2nd Lt. (temp. Lt.) Bernard Barnes, 15th Bn., Lond. R., T.F. (employed 140th Bde. Machine Gun Coy.).’; ‘For conspicuous gallantry. When telephone communication was cut he constantly procured useful information under heavy fire. On one occasion he crossed a heavy hostile barrage of fire in order to reach the front trenches, and, although wounded, completed his mission and brought back valuable information’.

Captain Barnes held the rank of Temporary Major in the M.G.C. from 14 July 1916 to 15 January 1920 and that of Acting Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 74th Battalion M.G.C. from 10 April to 28 December 1918. He was wounded by a shell splinter on the metacarpal bone of the left index finger on 14 September 1916. The flesh wound having gone septic he was invalided to England on 27 September. He was pronounced fit for general service on 24 November 1916 after which he posted to the Machine Gun Training Centre. He was demobilized on 12 January 1919.

Sold with commission document to Bernard Barnes as a Second Lieutenant in the Territorial Force, dated 13 September 1914. Also with a piece of shrapnel, with a note reading, ‘This is a piece of the shrapnel that wounded Bernard first time. He called it “a hair of the dog that bit me”. 1916 / First World War. He was wounded twice’. Sold with copied service papers.