Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Able Seaman G. L. Bradley, Royal Navy, later Royal Fleet Reserve, who served aboard the Q-Ship H.M.S. Mistletoe from 21 April 1918

1914-15 Star (221284 G. L. Bradley, A.B., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (221284 G. L. Bradley. A.B. R.N.) contact marks, very fine (3) £80-£100

George Lister Bradley was born in Durham on 27 August 1886 and attested for the Royal Navy as Boy 1st Class on 9 July 1902. Raised Ordinary Seaman aboard the cruiser Crescent 27 August 1904, and Able Seaman 30 October 1905, Bradley was invalided from service at the R.N. Hospital (Chatham) on 6 June 1912. Temporarily pensioned, he joined the Royal Fleet Reserve at Pembroke on 17 September 1914 and served aboard T.B. 114 from 20 October 1914 to 15 February 1918. Serving as part of the Nore torpedo boat flotilla, Bradley spent the majority of this time defending the gateway to the Thames Estuary and guiding allied shipping around the notoriously lethal sand banks enroute to the London Docks.

Transferred to the decoy vessel Mistletoe in the spring of 1918, Bradley’s comparatively ‘quiet’ war soon took a significant turn of events. A modern account published in the Daily Pilot of the Los Angeles Times, adds:
‘Built in Scotland in 1917, the 1,290-ton HMS Mistletoe had been disguised during the war to resemble an innocent-looking merchant vessel, with its big guns and depth charge launchers hidden beneath movable wooden baffles to deceive the enemy into believing it was not a Royal Navy warship... This ruse proved successful, and during assignments escorting Allied convoys from the U.S. to Great Britain, the Mistletoe was credited with sinking two German submarines and heavily damaging two others.’

Renamed Chiapas, and later, City of Panama, the Mistletoe spent the 1930’s as a ‘gambling ship’ off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico. In contrast, Bradley re-enrolled for a further 5 years in the R.N.R. from 17 September 1919, and was awarded the L.S. & G.C. Medal on 19 January 1927.

Sold with original R.N. Service Record on vellum, with private research.