A ‘Q-ship’ D.S.M. group of three awarded to Deck Hand Robert Armstrong, Royal Naval Reserve, wounded in action with an enemy submarine in June 1917

Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (S.D.1435 Dk. Hnd. R.N.R. Atlantic Ocean 9 June 1917); British War and Victory Medals (1435 D.H., R.N.R.) the first with replacement fixed suspension, edge bruising, therefore nearly very fine (3) £600-800

D.S.M. London Gazette 17 November 1917: ‘For services in action with enemy submarines.’

Robert Armstrong was enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve at Barrow on 5 June 1915. He served in Vivid, Daeel Castle and Sabrina, before being appointed to Q-17 (also known by the names Helgoland, Horley and Brig 10) on 1 June 1917. Helgoland was armed with four 12-pounders and one Maxim, her crew carefully chosen from the personnel serving in Auxiliary Patrol vessels at Falmouth, with the exception of the guns’ crew. The ship’s complement consisted of two R.N.R. officers, one skipper, one second hand, two petty officers, six Royal Navy gunnery ratings, eight deckhands of the trawler reserve, one carpenter, one steward, and one cook. One of her two officers in the early days was Temporary Sub-Lieutenant W. E. L. Sanders, a New Zealander who went on to win the Victoria Cross in the Q-ship Prize in 1917, as well as the D.S.O. for another action with submarines.

Helgoland had already had two major actions with enemy U-boats during the latter part of 1916, and, on 9 June, 1917, had another encounter, this time off the north coast of Ireland, the exact spot being 8 miles North by West of Tory Island. The fight began at 7:25 a.m., and half an hour later the submarine obtained a direct hit on the after-gun house of the brigantine, killing one man, wounding four ratings, and stunning the whole of the after-guns’ crews. But Helgoland, with her charmed life, was not sunk, and she shelled the submarine so fiercely that the U-boat had to dive and disappear.

Deckhand Robert Armstrong was one of the four ratings wounded in this action, ‘shell wounds causing losing of ankle by shortening of muscle’. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and discharged to shore as invalid on 9 October 1917, later being granted a disability pension, silver war badge, and the King’s Special Discharge Certificate.