Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Memorial Plaque bestowed upon Private B. L. Lomax, Durham Light Infantry, who was posted missing, presumed killed in action, on the Western Front on the first day of the German Spring Offensive, 21 March 1918

Memorial Plaque (Benjamin Lockhart Lomax) in card envelope, with Buckingham Palace enclosure, light file marks to reverse, good very fine £60-£80

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Great War Casualties.

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Provenance: Acquired by the vendor directly from the recipient’s family.

Benjamin Lockhart Lomax was born in Hull and attested there for the East Yorkshire Regiment on 24 November 1915. Transferring to the Durham Light Infantry on mobilisation on 11 May 1917, he served with the 15th Battalion during the Great War on the Western Front from 20 August 1917, and was posted missing, presumed killed in action, on 21 March 1918, the first day of the German Spring Offensive. He has no known grave, and is commemorated on the Pozières Memorial, France.

Contemporary newspaper cuttings included with the lot give details of how the recipient’s Memorial Plaque, along with his Great War medals, were stolen from an unoccupied house in Hull in August 1939, and subsequently found in the possession of a person arrested in the city for a number of cases of housebreaking. Additional copied research with the lot shows the efforts that the local police and the War Office went to in order to reunite the medals and plaque with their rightful owner.

Note: The date of the recipient’s death as recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Roll of Honour is 31 March 1918, with his death adjudged to have occurred between 21 and 31 March; his service records, and the War Office records, give the date of his death as 21 March 1918.