Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte

The Great War D.S.O. group of seven awarded to Captain G. F. W. Wilson, Royal Navy, who was decorated for his command of the sloop Zinnia during a skilfully executed attack on an enemy submarine in May 1917 - Zinnia worked in close liaison with Queenstown Command’s Q-Ships, on one occasion coming to the rescue of Gordon Campbell’s Pargust: taken P.O.W. in the 1939-45 War, following the sinking of the armed boarding vessel Van Dyck off Norway in 1940, Wilson was S.B.O. at Marlag und Milag and won a “mention” for his part in organising escape activities

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. G. F. W. Wilson, R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (Lt. Commr. G. F. W. Wilson, R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; War Medal, M.I.D. oak leaf, mounted court-style as worn, generally good very fine and better (7) £2500-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte.

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D.S.O. London Gazette 20 July 1917:

‘For services in action with enemy submarines.’

Graham Francis Winstanley Wilson was born in Woking, Surrey in October 1886 and entered the Royal Navy direct from the training ship Conway in January 1904. Advanced to Lieutenant in February 1908, he was serving in the battleship Marlborough on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, but in September of the following year he was given his first command, the sloop Zinnia, in which capacity he served for the remainder of the War. And a busy war it proved, one notable incident being his involvement in the Easter Rising / Roger Casement affair in April 1916, when Zinnia was closely involved in the capture of the German steamer Aud, which was disguised as a Norwegian vessel.

But, above all, Zinnia gained fame for her part in numerous rescue missions, some of which are recorded in Keble Chatterton’s Danger Zone and, appropriately enough for a sloop of the Queenstown Command, one of them was mounted on behalf of Gordon Campbell’s damaged Q-Ship Pargust, following the latter’s successful encounter with the UC-29 on 7 June 1917:

‘At 9.30 a.m., Pargust, who had one Stoker Petty Officer killed and an Engineer Sub. Lieutenant wounded, wirelessed that she herself was totally disabled and required immediate assistance. The message was intercepted by the two sloops Zinnia and Crocus, the former reaching Pargust at 1 p.m., and the second ten minutes earlier. The Crocus got the stricken ship in tow, whilst the Zinnia lowered a boat and fetched off the two prisoners [from the UC-29]; Lieutenant Hans Bruhn of Hamburg, who spoke English but would give no information, and Petty Officer Franz Tailla, a Saxon, who had little English, but spoke freely ... Zinnia resumed her patrol and, two days later picked up three boats from one torpedoed ship and shortly afterwards the crew of a second. A total of 63 men were thus taken on board - “Great care had to be taken to keep them apart from the two German prisoners,” Captain Wilson informed me, as considerable feeling was clearly manifested ... ’

But Wilson’s observations were not solely limited to Keble Chatterton, for, back at his base in Berehaven, his company was much enjoyed by Gordon Campbell, the latter noting in his memoirs that the Zinnia was his “chummy” sloop, and it was always a pleasure meeting her skipper - ‘It gave us a welcome change, as otherwise, even ashore, we lived a life very much to ourselves.’

Shortly before the Pargust - UC-29 action, in May, Zinnia had her own encounter with a submarine, and Wilson was credited with a well carried out approach in his attack. He was awarded the D.S.O., the same London Gazette heading of 20 July 1917 listing five other recipients, all of them Q-Ship men, including Gordon Campbell. For his own part, Wilson received his insignia from the King at a Buckingham Palace investiture in the same month.

Yet the Zinnia was to have many further adventures under Wilson’s command, among them a serious collision with an American destroyer - on which occasion Their Lordships recorded their appreciation of the ‘prompt manner in which the U.S.S. Benham was taken in tow’; and participation in the same convoy in which the U.S.S. Fanning destroyed the U-58.

Removing from Zinnia to command of the Clematis in September 1919, Wilson was next attached to the Royal Australian Navy, serving as Second-in-Command of H.M.A.Ss Brisbane and Melbourne in the mid-1920s before returning home to take command of the Marshal Soult 1926-29. He was placed on the Retired List with the rank of Captain in November 1932.

Recalled on the renewal of hostilities, Wilson was appointed to the command of the armed boarding vessel Van Dyck, in which capacity he was taken P.O.W. when she was sunk by enemy aircraft north of Harstad, off Norway on 10 June 1940 - two fellow officers and five ratings were killed. Incarcerated in Marlag und Milag, where he was the S.B.O., Wilson took an instant dislike to the Commandant, ‘a nasty little Prussian martinet, aged over seventy, with a white goatee beard - his manner was always scrupulously correct in a heavy unendearing Prussian fashion’.

Luckily for posterity’s sake, Wilson’s papers and diaries from this period are preserved at the Imperial War Museum, London, but for more immediate sources, he is mentioned extensively in David Rolf’s Prisoners of the Reich, Germany’s Captives 1939-45 (London, 1988), and, too, in Prisoner’s Progress, the highly entertaining memoirs of Lieutenant-Commander D. P. James, M.B.E., D.S.C., who made a “home-run” in early 1944 - disguised as ‘Lieutenant Bugarov’ of the Bulgarian Navy. And it is appropriate that a “home-run” should receive mention in these notes, for Wilson, in his capacity of S.B.O., was the last port of call for potential escapers, each having to obtain his permission to ‘leave the ship’. He was duly mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 23 October 1945), official records noting:

‘For good service, leadership and resource during captivity in Germany in organising escapes from the prison camp over a period of several years, by which means valuable information was received by the War Office.’

Wilson reverted to the Retired List in October 1945.