dante

Harold Dorman Patterson was born in 1875 in West Derby Lancashire he was appointed Home Office, Inspector under the Aliens Act in 1910 and was appointed temporary 2/Lt in the embryonic Intelligence corps, disembarking at St Nazaire 14/9/1914 Returning to the UK in 23/4 1915 (according to his documents) with neurasthenia (shell shock), he was sent to the Duchess of Connaught Canadian Red Cross Hospital, Cliveden, Taplow, Bucks. In early 1916 he was attached to the Home Defence (cyclist) company at the Bell hotel, Great Driffield, Yorkshire and later to the 9th Hampshire regiment. However in truth Harold was a member of Mi5 he is noted on official records joining on 12 April 1916 and leaving in July 1919. He was Port Control Officer at Newcastle and later at Southampton. On 29 June 1918 the Military Control in Southampton reported the arrival in the port of a Russian officer (one Major General Lodijensky) who professed that his mission was to prevent Kerensky journeying to Paris and attempting to ‘put himself at the head’ of the intervention. If that happened, the general informed his interviewer (noted as Captain H.D. Patterson), ‘the whole cause will be lost’, as ‘Kerensky’s name bears no weight with the people whose sympathies have been laboriously enlisted. Major General Lodijensky was a general in the Russian army. After the monarchy was overthrown, he fled Russia and eventually wound up in Hollywood, where he earned a living for a while doing extra work in films and acting as a technical adviser on films about Russia. The film The Last Command is based partly on his life. As you would expect from his life in the shadows little else is know....... Harold was awarded the OBE in 1919

Thanks P, been looking like mad.....my money is Gailroth in Bavaria

War takes it toll sometimes years after the event.........I hope that this article highlights one mans extreme gallantry and not his flaws......a single 1915 star We first come across Honorary Temporary Sub-Lt RNVR James "Hardy" Brown when he was MID for his services during the advance on Kut-el-Amara in 1915 and again in 1916: I can only assume he was skipper of one of the Lynch Brothers Tigris river steamers. His RNVR records note him being on the river steamer "Mejidieh" or "Medijidieh" He is next mentioned in the London Gazette 1917; His Majesty The KING (is) pleased to approve of the appointments of the undermentioned Officers to be Companions of the Distinguished Service Order in recognition of their gallantry and devotion to duty in the Field: He was invested with the DSO by the Duke of York 20/07/1920. The DSO to a temporary Sub Lt.......is very rare! “Temp. Sub-Lt. James Hardy Brown, R.N.V.R. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty throughout the campaign. He has navigated his ship at high speed, night and day, in all weathers, with marked zeal and determination. He has at all times set a magnificent example of courage and initiative”. In 1917 He was transferred to the army with a note that his middle name was "Harvey" to the Inland Water Transport as a Lt temporary Captain (DSO). We find him next in 1918 as shipping controller, Caspian sea noted in the Naval review; " On the reoccupation of the city in November, 1918, the majority of companies owning ships formed a pool under the guidance of Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Brown, D.S.O., I.W.T., and almost the entire financial and other business of the pool, including storing, fuelling, wages of crews, freight charges, etc., was controlled by his office. To eliminate one among the numberless obstacles to the running of the pool, the Shipping Controller (Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, I.W.T.) employed one steamer, known locally as the Green Alexander to supply mazoot to any ship that needed it at Baku". He appears to have brought back a wife as he married in 1918 Vita daughter of J M Dual of Baku (Russia) and appointed an OBE in 1919. It appears civilian life also had its fair share of adventures, he is noted as a banker "J H Brown Ltd" foreign bankers and in 1924 he was made bankrupt as Lieutenant-Colonel James Harvey Brown, 18 Palace, Court, London, W. 2, and St. Stephen's Chambers, Telegraph Street, London, E.G., banker. In 1931 he was found guilty of fraud and sentence at the old bailey to 18 months in prison and in 1937 his appeal was upheld and exonerated. An article was written on his death; http://newspaperarchive.com/lethbridge-herald/1945-09-20/page-5/ A colourful Canadian who lived his last lonely years in a Chelsea flat was found dead at home and a jury later brought in a verdict that James Harvey Brown 65 died of chronic alcoholism. In 1937 Brown told friends that if he could have sold out his interests at a fair price in 1920. He was born in or Halifax he son of a lawyer his friends said In early life he went to Texas to be a cowboy. At 21 he inherited a fortune but lost it At 25 he made another from a shipping venture in San Francisco A later he lost this fortune in the sugar market In 1910 he went to Persia and worked on the opening of the upper Karum river the waterway leading to the Batum and Baku oilfields He formed a company for the transport of mail arid made another fortune First Great War he was a director of river transport on the Tigris and Euphrates and for his services there received the DSO and OBE. A few years after that war ended he found himself again a poor man In April 1931 he was sentenced in London to six months imprisonment for converting to his own use the property of the International Brick Co of which he was a director That sentence was quashed by the appeal court Six years later he was sentenced to 18 months on a charge but again the conviction was quashed by the appeal court. When the Second Great started Brown attempted to enlist again but he was too old He came a voluntary ambulance driver.

Wonderful jacket.....will see what I can find out on him

No he received the Silver war medal......more interesting was the medal was found in Germany!!

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To continue the espionage theme, here is a single british war medal..........Lt Walter Reginald Ames, Royal Fusiliers and Intelligence Corps; Born 1890, his father was John Carlovitz Ames a renowned composer and whose mother was Clara Henriette Marie, Gräfin von Pölzig. Clara married the British ship-owner George Acland Ames on 13 July 1854. Clara and Ames separated in July 1869, and Clara returned to Pölzig. She lived as a "the young countess" in the Schloss and died 10 years later in Beiersdorf. The Ames family in England inherited the Schloss on the death in of 1884. Walter went to school at Clifton collage and then went to work on the family estate near Korschen in East Prussia until the Germans attacked Russia in 1914 and the subsequent Russian invasion (see the press clipping; He is noted as being an Interpreter before being gazetted on the 10 December 1914 as a 2nd Lt and noted as serving in the 10th (Intelligence) Bn, Royal Fusiliers; http://archive.org/stream/RoyalFusiliersIntelligenceCorps1914-18/TheRoyalFusiliersAndTheIntelligenceCorps_djvu.txt No mention of his war service other than him not being able to be posted to the Mediterranean and him returning to be discharged on medical grounds in 1917, noting his service being with the 5th Bn Royal Fusiliers from the 13th Bn although on his “Return” certificate he is noted as being in the Intelligence Corps (confirmed on his MIC). He clearly did not deploy to France until 1916 and was awarded the British war and Victory medal for his service, He is noted being discharged as having having Osteo-arthritis and was awarded the silver war/wound badge. His medals were sent in 1923 to an address in Luxemburg His medical condition seems to have not stopped him working as he is noted on his marriage licence in 1923 as being a “Courier, Foreign Office” In 1941 it is noted that he was living in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt Am Main, Hessen (Hesse) No other information is currently available.

Cheers Chris

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Some of mine, hope you like them........

I have been collecting medals with an espionage theme for some time, here is one of the most intriguing; In the book "Room 40" which details Naval Intelligence during the great war the story of the "Erri Borro" affair in which a Spanish fishing trawler carrying Spanish Wolfram for the German war effort was captured by the Royal Navy and the chase across Spain by a British Naval officer called "Dawson" The story of "Dawson" was further elaborated in the The Sunday Express, London, October 5th, 1941 THE SECRET MISSION OF COMMANDER X By George Slocombe Mr. Churchill’s reference to the possibility of a Nazi thrust through Spain this winter lends extraordinary appositeness to a story I am authorised to relate for the first time. It concerns one of the most brilliant exploits of the last war, performed by a British naval officer whom I shall describe as Commander X. In October 1917 Commander X was engaged on anti-U-boat activities in the Bay of Biscay. Suddenly, he was summoned to London to confer with Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, then Director of Naval Intelligence. Admiral Hall told the commander that the British Government was seriously perturbed at the situation in Spain. Several score thousand Germans, many of them non-commissioned officers, were installed in the peninsula. German influence permeated the court, the high officers in the Army, the Church, and even the Government. The Minister of War, Sanchez Guerra (afterwards Premier) was committed to a pro-German policy. Germany was secretly backing a junta of discontented army officers, on whom she relied to overthrow the Government, bring Spain into the war against the Allies, and invade France. Spanish intervention would be doubly dangerous at that moment. It would cut off our supplies of iron ore for munitions making, of which we had only two weeks’ reserves in hand. And since the Pyrenees frontier of Spain was held by only a few battalions of French troops, the road would be open to a Spanish-German attack on the new American supply base at Bordeaux. This was the alarming situation which Commander X, a young British officer with a perfect knowledge of Spanish and many friends in Madrid, was invited by Admiral Hall to attempt to reverse in our favour. Two days later he arrived in Madrid. There he discovered that the leader of the malcontents in the Spanish Army was Colonel Marques, a tough, middle-aged veteran and military governor of Barcelona. Commander X decided to beard the conspirator in his den. He took the night train to Barcelona, requested and obtained an interview with Colonel Marques, and in a long and frank conversation with that officer laid all his cards – and his country’s - on the table. That night Colonel Marques and two others in the conspiracy dined with Commander X and appeared to be honestly impressed by his arguments against Spanish intervention. But they told him that the grievances of the army malcontents were real and not invented, and that the junta of high officers in Barcelona would not readily abandon them. Here the story becomes wilder than a Hollywood screen drama. Hearing that a meeting of the 25 members of the junta had been summoned for the next day, and that it had to make the fatal decision whether or not to face a war with France, Commander X insisted on appearing before the junta in person. - 2 - He did so, harangued the 25 Spanish officers for over an hour and to such good effect that they promised to call of their projected pronunciamento against the Government and the Allies if the Government undertook to satisfy their claims by 6 p.m. the next day. These claims were actually entrusted to the British officer, who undertook to present them to the Prime Minister, Señor Dato, and telegraph the Government’s answer by the appointed time. The next day, in Madrid, Commander X was received by an astonished Prime Minister. The time was now 4 p.m. Only two hours remained. A Cabinet meeting was called, and the British officer awaited its outcome in an ante-chamber. He could hear the sounds of vehement argument. At 5.45 p.m. Señor Dato emerged from the Cabinet room and told him that the matter was settled, the Government would remain neutral. A number of too-active German agents would be politely requested to leave the country. Sanches Guerra, the pro-German War Minister, would resign from the Government, ostensibly on grounds of ill-health. And all the claims of the malcontents in the army junta would be granted. The Premier himself returned the ultimatum of the conspirators to Commander X, with his signature affixed beneath the claims as a guarantee of good faith. And a few minutes before 6 p.m. he, personally, ordered the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs to clear the telegraph wires to Barcelona in order that Commander X might flash the signal of success, in a prearranged code, to the leader of the army rebels. And now comes the moral of this remarkable incident. In October 1941 the situation in Spain bears an astonishing resemblance to that in October 1917. The Germans have permeated the Government, the army, the Press, the Church. Sir Samuel Hoare assures us a little naively that we have more friends in Spain that we know of, but the truth is that our friends, numerous as they are, are in Spanish prisons or in hiding, or waging guerrilla warfare in the mountains of Asturias. Great Britain has lent five million sterling to the Franco Government, but little of this has been spent to alleviate the Spanish population. On the other hand, the Spanish Government has been suspiciously active in building strategic roads, airfields and naval bases – for use against whom? There is, further, the suspicious affair of the recent torpedo attack against Gibraltar. The small craft which launched these torpedoes could not possibly have come from the nearest Italian naval base in Sardinia. They could only have been despatched from Tangier, Ceuta or Algeciras – all three Spanish ports, or ports under Spanish control. We have received solemn assurances that the supplies of lubricating oil and petrol which have been allowed to enter Spain with the consent of the British Government will not be diverted to the Axis countries. These assurances, ironically enough, may be sincere, since if Hitler intends to attack Gibraltar through Spain he would obviously hope to find petrol and lubricants for his tanks and planes awaiting him in Spain, thus sparing him the necessity of a double transportation across France. It is significant, to say the least, that the recent release of further supplies of oil and petrol to Spain has been followed by further restrictions on the sale of these commodities for domestic consumption. Moreover, there is strong ground for suspicion that part of the oil supplies released by us has been diverted to Spanish warships and submarines in Spanish ports. All the signs are, therefore, that Spain may be on the verge of taking grave decisions in the future. We shall not avert those decisions, if they are hostile to us, by the diplomatic methods on which we have relied in our dealings with Franco hitherto. Nor shall we influence them in our favour by holding out to the Spanish imperialists the vague hope that after the war we should be disposed to discuss the future of Gibraltar. Negotiations with Spain can only be conducted on a basis of ruthless logic and cold realism. We should tell Franco brutally that if he throws in his lot with the Axis, Spain is in a far less favourable situation to make war today than she was in 1917. Then, she could have attacked France with impunity. Now, there is not a half-prostrate land Power to attack, but a tried and victorious sea Power. Spain’s immense coastline exposes her to every weapon of the sea arena. She would experience the blockade at its deadliest. Moreover, Franco has several million dangerous and stubborn enemies at home whom we should do everything to arm, organise and encourage. If Franco joins Hitler, he should be told that he shares the fate of Mussolini. There, in brief, is the mission which should be offered in October 1941 to a second Commander X. Dawson was also involved with a Spanish ship in San Sebastian which used to go out regularly to revictual a large submarine which signalled its approach in Morse. Having learned the signal, Dawson tried for weeks to buy off the skipper of the boat which was carrying victuals to the submarine. On one occasion, he had anonymous letters written to all members of the crew, saying that the most unfortunate things would happen to them if they went on with their work. Some of the crew struck, but the skipper obtained others. Eventually, a way was found to substitute one of the packs of turnips which were to be carried to the submarine. The actual pack which was substituted contained turnips filled with T.N.T. and a time-fuse. Lt Albert Edward Dawson RNVR temporary Vice Consul at San Sebastian, Spain, born Mar 1882, Oldham, Lancashire, England, About 1900, Moved to Spain to set himself up in business, by 1917 he was extremely successful in his business He also held interests in the Hotel Maria Christina in San Sebastian and a casino in Biarritz. He was appointed OBE as "Lieutenant Albert Edward Dawson", R.N.V.R. Naval Intelligence Division, Admiralty. He lived at Villa Tairones, Paseo Atocha, San Sebastian, Spain. And died in 1945 South Harrow, London, UK. His son Kenneth David Sydney Dawson was killed as a private in the Hong Kong Dockyard Defence Corps 18 December 1941 formally formerly 2nd Officer, Merchant Navy.

A chance look at German ebay and a successfully purchase of a broken WW1 victory medal named to G-73411 PTE. FJ Andrae. Middx R has come up with an interesting story....http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bronze-Medail ... true&rt=nc Frederick Jacob Andrae was born in 1883 Germany (the 1901 census has the place as Gilbroth but no such place exists) the surname seems to be Bavarian. He is noted in 1901 as being a barman at the William IV public house in Shepherdess Walk and in 1911 as a publican at the Springfield Hotel, Springfield Terrace, Bounds Green Road, New Southgate, he was made a naturalised UK citizen in 1910. In June 1916 he was called up and served 31st and 30th (Works) Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Authorised by Army Council Instruction 1209 of 1916, the Middlesex Regiment formed two labour battalions, numbered 30th and 31st (Works) Battalions, manned by recruits who were naturalised British citizens but of enemy alien parentage. The men mainly came from German backgrounds and were for the most part not of low medical grade (such as was the case with the units of the Labour Corps). The two units remained in England as part of the regiment and were never transferred to the Labour Corps. However Fred seems to have managed to get to France arriving in Bologne in march 1917 with the 2 Infantry Labour Company - and returning home over two years later at the end of 1919. He was awarded the British War Medal and Victory.

Here are two groups of mine, one French agent and another Belgium

Hi Chris all packed away........the Wurtemberg is small and stitched on and the Bayern is the "Leib" version

some more

Here is some of mine

Just going through my collection to database items not yet researched and came across this photo....named on the back Albert Gonsenheimer 1918..... The Gonsenheimers were a Jewish family who lived at Helmstedter Strasse, Belin-Wilmersdorf, Albert was born 17/10/1899, They appear to have emigrated to Brussels/Monte Carlo in the 1930's. In 1935 his German nationality was annulled by the Nazi regime. In 1940 he was deported to camp Saint-Cyprien in France, released then re-arrested in 1942 he was Deported from Drancy on the 18th transport to Auschwitz and on the 22/01/1945 transported to Buchenwald where he died on the 28/02/1945. He is remembered on the Shoah Memorial in Paris Where the photo came from, who wrote the name I do not know, ..........Rest In Peace

Can anyone help?

Welcome your thoughts on these two items, thanks, Paul

Nice picture Oberschlesien......can anyone help with translation?

Here is the certificate.......least you could chuck it on the wall!!

Excellent medal bar......any chance of a close up to compare with the 1914 varient ?

As a family member, do him the honour of mounting them, the future maybe very un-kind to a loose group