Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War M.M. group of four awarded to Corporal S. E. Eggins, Royal Artillery

Military Medal, G.V.R. (86671 Bmbr. S. E. Eggins, A. 72/Bde. R.F.A.); 1914-15 Star (86671 A.-Bmbr., R.F.A.); British War and Victory Medals (86671 Cpl., R.A.), the last three in original card forwarding boxes, good very fine (4) £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Selection of Medals from the Collection of the Late Noel Morris.

View
Collection

M.M. London Gazette 21 October 1916.

Sydney Ephraim Eggins, who was born in London in December 1893, enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery at Woolwich in August 1914. Posted to A/72nd Brigade, R.F.A. in the rank of Acting Bombardier in May 1915, he arrived in France in the following July, where, but for a four month spell of duty in Italy, he served continuously until the end of the War. According to accompanying research, he ‘also suffered a wound to his leg which troubled him for the rest of his life’. Equally probable is that his M.M. was awarded for bravery on the Somme.

Eggins was demobbed in the rank of Corporal in June 1919 and became a warehouseman for Waring and Gillow in London’s West End, finally retiring in 1955 as a head storekeeper at their Hammersmith depot. In the interim, he served as an A.R.P. Warden. Eggins died in February 1976.

Sold with three original Great War portrait picture postcards, all in uniform, together with other contemporary documentation including the recipient’s certificate of demobilization.