Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Great War Armentieres 1915 operations D.S.O. group of three awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel L. C. Howard, C.O. of the 8th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, late Royal Artillery: he was killed in action just a week after winning his D.S.O.

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., in its Garrard & Co. case of issue; 1914-15 Star (Major, Som. L.I.); British War Medal 1914-20 (Lt. Col.), enamel wreaths on the first chipped in places, otherwise generally good very fine (3) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the 13th Regiment and Somerset Light Infantry.

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D.S.O. London Gazette 22 January 1916:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and ability on the night of 15-16 December 1915, near Armentieres. He organised with the greatest energy and skill a successful raid by his battalion on the German trenches. He inspired all ranks with enthusiasm and confidence. He displayed complete indifference to personal danger during the withdrawal of the raiding force under heavy fire. Lieutenant-Colonel Howard had previously been brought to notice for gallant work near Loos on 26 September 1915.’

Lewis Charles Howard was born in March 1881, the son of a serving Quarter-Master Sergeant of the East Lancashire Regiment who was from Lytham. Having served for nearly eight years in the ranks - latterly as a Corporal in the Royal Field Artillery - Howard Jnr. was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment in late 1903; contemporary Army Lists credit him with service in the Transvaal, Orange River Colony and Cape Colony during the Boer War.

In May 1905, however, in circumstances not dissimilar to British actor David Niven, he was removed from the Army for being absent without leave and made his way to the U.S.A., where apparently he ‘adopted the stage as a profession with considerable success.’ Furthermore, on learning of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, like Niven a quarter of a century later, he immediately returned home to enlist.

Commissioned into the 10th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment as a Lieutenant in late September 1914, he had attained the rank of Temporary Major by the time he transferred to the command of the 8th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry.

In addition to his D.S.O., the gallant Howard was mentioned in despatches for his part in the action in the “Chalk Pits” at Loos on the 25-26 September 1915 (London Gazette 1 January 1916). His own extensive account of the action is to be found in the regimental history, in which he describes being under heavy fire:

‘ ... However, we were all in good spirits and blazed away at the Germans who were coming into full view all the time now ... Things began to get warm now and we all took rifles and shot carefully along the wood wherever the enemy debouched, at ranges varying from 400 to 800 yards. Ammunition ran low so we stripped the dead of theirs and got enough to keep going, and at 11.40 a.m., to our great joy, we saw reinforcements coming over the brow of the slope behind us ...’

The same history also relates the gallant story of the 8th Battalion’s raid against enemy trenches opposite “The Mushroom” feature on the night of 15-16 December 1915, when Howard won his D.S.O., in addition to mention of his subsequent death:

‘The final tour of the 8th Somersets in the tenches before the year ended was marked by the loss of the Battalion’s gallant C.O. On the night of 23-24 December ‘D’ Company relieved a company of the 10th Y. & L. Regiment in “The Mushroom”, Lieutenant-Colonel Howard accompanying them. The latter then went out to reconnoitre between the two craters, and whilst there was unfortunately shot. His body was carried in that night ...’

Howard was interred in the Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery at Armentieres.