A well-documented and interesting Great War pair to Corporal R. H. Le Messurier, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, afterwards a Rhodes Scholar who was ordained into the Church of England

British War and Victory Medals (2416 Cpl., R. Newf’d R.), in card forwarding boxes, together with regimental badge, I.D. bracelet and assorted sporting prize medals (17), circa 1910, mainly silver, several named, extremely fine (2) £300-350

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

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Ralph Huie Le Messurier was born at St. John’s, Newfoundland in March 1898. Musically talented, he made his first public performance at the piano at the tender age of six years and went on to perform as a soloist at the Cathedral and in local operetta productions. He was also a versatile sportsman and played for his college at ice hockey, rugby and football.

Enlisting in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment at the age of 18 years, shortly after hearing of the decimation of the Regiment on the Somme on 1 July 1916, he was quickly advanced to Corporal and was himself serving in the trenches on the Somme before the end of the year:

‘Of course I wasn’t a good soldier, at least not physically. I know that period in the war was pretty grim, that I didn’t have a dry stitch of clothes on me for three months, that the mud of the Somme seemed to have become part of me. All I could do was go on as long as I could ... I carried on until I was quite literally picked up unconscious, suffering from complete exhaustion. In fact, in hospital a kind sister told me I wasn’t expected to last the night.’

Invalided to the U.K., Le Messurier eventually returned to duty as a regimental instructor at Ayr, refused a commission and had returned to the trenches in Belgium before the War’s end. These experiences on the battlefield clearly had a very profound effect upon him and on returning home in 1919 he refused to participate in the local victory parade.

Afterwards Le Messurier gained a place to study theology at McGill University in Montreal and from there won a Rhodes Scholarship to study the same subject at Keble College, Oxford. Suitably qualified, he was ordained into the Church of England in 1925 and was appointed to the parish of Bunbury in Cheshire. Subsequent postings included parishes in Tottenham and Stroud Green, and in 1933 he became vicar of the Church of the Holy Cross at St. Pancras in London, in which capacity he served until forced to resign as a result of his pacifist views in the Second World War - he was even physically assaulted by members of his congregation but courageously remained in the parish to continue operating the church’s night shelter for those seeking safety from the Blitz.

At the end of the War, Le Messurier moved to Cornwall to run a boarding house with his wife at Truro, but sadly he died in August 1948.

The lost is sold with a substantial quantity of original documentation, including around ten ecclesiastical certificates of appointment, etc.; two photograph albums, the first covering the period 1919-26, with scenes from Newfoundland, Montreal and Oxford, and the second the period 1928-31, with scenes from ministerial days, including family; copies of several religious books and pamphlets written by Le Mesurrier (5); a typescript of his unpublished autobiography, entitled By Grace A Pacifist, circa 1942; and much besides.