Beschreibung:

Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte An exceptional Great War Royal Naval Division operations M.C., C.G.M. group of five awarded to Temporary Lieutenant F. W. Stear, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, late Royal Navy, who was decorated for his gallantry in Anson Battalion in Gallipoli in June 1915 and in Hawke Battalion at Welsh Ridge in December 1917 - having in the interim been invalided with shell-shock: according to Douglas Jerrold, Hawke ‘never had a better company commander’ Military Cross, G.V.R.; Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, G.V.R. (173071 F. W. Stear, Ch. P.O., Anson Bn., R.N. Div.); 1914 Star, with clasp (173071 F. W. Stear, C.P.O., Anson Bttn. R.N.D.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. F. W. Stear, R.N.V.R.), mounted as worn, the first with officially corrected number, generally very fine (5) £12000-15000 Footnote M.C. London Gazette 3 June 1918. C.G.M. London Gazette 13 September 1915: ‘He showed great gallantry and did meritorious work on 4 June in rallying the men of the support line of the Collingwood Battalion, which had lost most of the officers, and in leading them to the assault of the enemy’s trenches.’ Frederick Witton Stear was born in Devon in May 1893 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in May 1893. A Chief Petty Officer by the outbreak of hostilities, he was seconded to Anson Battalion, Royal Naval Division, in September 1914, and quickly saw action in Belgium, following which he was embarked for Gallipoli in the early summer of 1915. Gallipoli And it was here, as cited above, that he displayed conspicuous gallantry in the attack launched against Achi Baba, near Krithia on 4 June, when Anson Battalion stormed a Turkish redoubt and quickly carried the enemy’s front line, its advance being met with ferocious rifle and machine-gun fire. In fact, in the first seconds of the attack, more than half of the officers of the 2nd Naval Brigade were hit, and following Anson’s onward sweep under sole surviving officer Lieutenant Stuart Jones, R.N.V.R., with the gallant Stear at his side, just five officers and 250 men returned to the British lines out of the 70 officers and 1900 men who had originally started out; see Douglas Jerrold’s History of the Royal Naval Division for further details. Stear was awarded the C.G.M. and commissioned as a Temporary Sub. Lieutenant, R.N.V.R., in mid-June 1915. But the arduous nature of his service in Gallipoli was soon apparent, when, at the end of the following month, he was admitted to No. 1 Field Ambulance suffering from shell-shock. Evacuated to Malta, via Mudros, he next went down with jaundice and enteritis, as a result of which he was embarked for England in the Mauretania and admitted to the R.N.H. Haslar. France Having then been granted a period of leave on his recovery, he rejoined the R.N.D., attached 4th (Reserve) Battalion, at Blandford, in early 1916, from whence he attended physical training and bayonet courses, and at which establishment he was awarded the L.S. & G.C. Medal that June - the whereabouts of which remains unknown. Then in May 1917 he went out to France, and quickly distinguished himself as C.O. of ‘D’ Company, Hawke Battalion, not least in the severe fighting at Passchendaele on 31 October. Jerrold’s history takes up the story: ‘Lieutenant Stear’s ‘D’ Company of the Hawke Battalion had achieved an equal measure of success. Here the first enemy post attacked was on the left of the Battalion’s front, and was probably the same that had held up our attack on 26 October. Nine men and a machine-gun post were captured and four hours later an enemy ration party arrived and were also captured. When the first post was secured, Lieutenant Stear pushed out posts on either flank and to the north of long disputed Banff House.’ In his history of the Hawke Battalion, Jerrold also refers to further gallant work on the part of Stear’s ‘D’ Company at Welsh Ridge that December, in which action he won his M.C.: ‘At about 9 a.m. [on