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Auction: 18001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 561

'I went forward for fresh positions and I was shot by a Bavarian - good shot too - through my leg so much so that it spun me round and I saw the fellow. I very quickly got weak and fell down where I was. It was quite a long time before anything happened. However, eventually a doctor came up and he put on a tourniquet to stop the blood, but I had already stuck my leg up into the air and shouted to the German, "Nein, nein." He had a second shot at me and [luckily] it hit the ground … '

'They gave me an anaesthetic I suppose, but apparently I kicked the orderly who was taking care of me in the stomach and shot him right across the room. I wasn't completely under and he broke a lot of bottles and became a casualty too … '

Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Daubeny, D.S.O., describes a close shave during the closing months of the Great War - and subsequent events as he was subjected to the surgeon's knife on 'a very hard marble table'.

The outstanding Great War D.S.O. and Bar group of seven awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel G. B. Daubeny, Royal Artillery, who was also mentioned in despatches on four occasions

Having been decorated for his gallant command of a battery on the Somme in 1916, he won a Bar to his D.S.O. for like services in the Arras offensive in 1917, prior to being seriously wounded and evacuated home in the following year

The Colonel later penned some fascinating autobiographical recollections, among them tales of his travels as a King's Messenger between the wars, when, in his own words, he was often greeted by our 'Embassy Dragger' at his destination

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., with Second Award Bar, silver-gilt and enamel; 1914-15 Star (Capt. G. B. Daubeny, R.F.A.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col. G. B. Daubeny); Defence and War Medals 1939-45; France, Croix de Guerre 1914-1918, with bronze palm, enamel slightly chipped on the surround wreaths on the first, otherwise generally good very fine (7)

D.S.O. London Gazette 14 November 1916:

'For conspicuous gallantry in action. He conducted the fire of his battery from the advanced trenches under heavy fire with great skill and determination. He also sent in accurate reports throughout the day.'

Bar to D.S.O. London Gazette 27 September 1917:

'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. During an extremely critical period when the situation was by no means clear, he kept up continual fire with his battery and rendered invaluable support to the infantry, although his brigade was exposed to constant and heavy fire and suffering many casualties for two days. His behaviour during this period was beyond praise, and it was in a great measure due to his coolness, courage and personality that fire was kept up.'

Giles Bulteel Daubeny was born at Stentaway, Plymstock, South Devon, on 19 November 1882, the son of Giles Andrew Daubeny, late Captain of the 82nd (Prince of Wales's Volunteer) Foot.

Early days

Young Giles enjoyed a colourful and adventurous childhood, surrounded by plenty of family characters:

'My uncles (Bill and Fred) used to stay with us and tested my nerve by lowering me into a sunken field which housed a bull.'

By the age of eight he had learned how to ride, mostly bareback with a numnah, and roamed Dartmoor far and wide atop his moor pony Rosie, once reaching Princetown where he chatted with the 'Stone Gang' and their prison warder. On visits to his grandfather in Somerset, he would stay in Cornwallis Crescent:

'Here I met my uncle Henry who in 1882 was at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir and was reported as first into the Turkish Trenches. However, Uncle Henry always said his Corporal beat him by two feet. There were no D.S.O.s then.'

Regular visits to his mother in London followed, including a fleeting encounter with Queen Victoria in Hyde Park, but as Daubeny reached preparatory school age, his father decided to take work in Germany, following the taking over of the Plymouth Naval Bank by Lloyds of Pall Mall and the subsequent strain on the family finances; in Dresden, the family stayed with a German Baroness until their apartment was ready:

'The Emperor had a son called Willy, Prince Wilhelm. We stopped in Hess at Kassel [one day] and my mother and I went out for a drive. On our return to Wilhelmshohe, the crowd assembled on the sidewalk and kept calling "Hoch" which is a signification of applause, having mistaken me for the Kaiser's son and my Mother presumably for a governess.'

Following what appears to be have been a happy time at a private school, where he did well on the playing fields, Daubeny departed the Rhine and returned home to Kelly's College in Devon. Here, despite the odd scrape for illegal fishing on the River Tavy, he continued to do well, inspired by some 'good masters who were County Rugby Players and a Mohammedan Prince who could throw the ball practically 100 yards.'

Gunner subaltern

Passing into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he made good friends with John Bradbury - who would later become Chief Cashier at the Bank of England - the two of them gaining their commissions in May 1900.

Daubeny's first posting was to a battery in Portsmouth, with a C.O. 'who was a dreadful fellow really and quite useless.' It wasn't long before Daubeny was placed in command of guarding the destroyers brought up to the boom, and it seems his first challenge was dealing with the Highland Light Infantry troops under him, limiting their access to the dockyard workers who were generous with their drink: 'I flung them into a wet dungeon which cured them.'

His unhappy appointment at Portsmouth ended with a reprimand for ordering one of his infantryman 'to put a bullet about a yard in front of a destroyer's bows for failing to display the correct lights'.

Having been advanced to Lieutenant, Daubeny served as Adjutant of the East Anglian R.G.A. but, by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he had transferred to the R.F.A. in the rank of Captain.

Off to war - the Somme - D.S.O.

Following an inspection by Kitchener, Daubeny's R.F.A. battery was posted to France in June 1915 and he quickly found himself in action at Loos.

It was, however, for his gallant deeds on the Somme in 1916 - as a newly promoted Major - that Daubeny won his first D.S.O. By his own modest account, 'I did some good work there in squashing machine-gun nests and things like that.' His sharp eye also presented alternative targets:

'One day I discovered that there was a woman on the opposite side of the scarp and that all ammunition was being brought in a thing marked Red Cross. I very soon put a stop to that.'

In the latter stages of the Somme, Daubeny's battery came under fire from a German battery in High Wood:

'As anyone might get hit any day and as my senior subaltern was killed shortly before, I took Bunbury, an awfully good fellow, to show him round. There was a German battery on the other side but the two of us were together in a shell hole. The thing burst in the air. He was about two feet away from me and got hit in the lung and weakened very quickly. I knew what it was but if I had put him on my back the pressure would have been too great so I held him up by the back of his neck and I struggled down to where there was a dressing station. They took him into a dugout and I said, "I suppose I have killed him," and the doctor replied, "we shall see." Anyway, he left there and I heard from him at the base at Boulogne but in the end pneumonia supervened and that was the end of Bunbury.'

'As a result of all of these escapades,' continues the modest Daubeny, 'they gave me a D.S.O. which was very kind of them.'

Arras and beyond - Bar to D.S.O.

Appointed to the command of 70th Brigade R.F.A. in the following year, Daubeny led his batteries with distinction at Arras and beyond, including the Cambrai and Passchendaele operations. Clearly a resourceful C.O., he took to the skies with the R.F.C. to gain the latest intelligence for his guns:

'Before that - the push towards Cambrai - I had been back to Amiens and had gone up in an aeroplane, single pilot, to fly over Germany. We practised first with our guns mounted but not with ammunition. When I looked over the side of the plane when he was turning, I couldn't see the sky but only the earth. However, we turned back and when we reached the aerodrome at Amiens, there was an awful fuss because they had got all the casualty things there. It appeared that we were followed by a German fighter who, of course, did not know, with the machine-gun sticking up in the air, that we were only taking photographs. However, we got away with it.'

The subsequent award of his second D.S.O. reflected his 'coolness, courage and personality' over a 48-hour critical period in which his Brigade took serious casualties. Of his subsequent investiture, he wrote:

'It was my turn to go on leave and when I arrived at Victoria, I was told to go to Buckingham Palace. There was no proper investiture at that time. Three of us were ushered into a room with a window seat overlooking the pond. We sat down and on my right was a fellow I didn't like who had got the Victoria Cross and the Military Cross, and on the other side was a fellow whose name I think was Watson. He hadn't got anything yet but he was about to have the V.C. He was simply dripping with funk because he hadn't had a decoration before! However, we calmed him down. George V, with a sailor's punctuality, turned up at 10 a.m. and that was the whole investiture. When the King handed me the Bar I didn't know what to do with it - so I shoved it into my pocket.'

Return to the front - wounded

Daubeny returned to the front in early 1918, his journey across the Channel from Folkestone to Le Havre being much improved by the company of 'Bungo' Byng, Governor-General of Canada, and much hampered by the presence of German submarines and a distinct lack of alcohol aboard the Donegal, despite the presence of large numbers of 'joy-riding Brigadiers -tourists.'

During the final stages of the war, Daubeny was seriously wounded:

'I went forward for fresh positions and I was shot by a Bavarian - good shot too - through my leg so much so that it spun me round and I saw the fellow. I very quickly got weak and fell down where I was. It was quite a long time before anything happened. However, eventually a doctor came up and he put on a tourniquet to stop the blood, but I had already stuck my leg up into the air and shouted to the German, "Nein, nein." He had a second shot at me and [luckily] it hit the ground … '

The bullet had punctured his femoral artery. Although he did not know it at the time, the doctor had placed a red ticket on his jacket which signified immediate operation, and eventually, he was carried away on a stretcher by four German prisoners, overseen by a Canadian.


He was immediately operated on at a Casualty Clearing Station before being placed on a hospital train back to base, where he was operated on for a second time on a very hard marble table:

'They gave me an anaesthetic I suppose, but apparently I kicked the orderly who was taking care of me in the stomach and shot him right across the room. I wasn't completely under and he broke a lot of bottles and became a casualty too … '

Evacuated home, he was placed in the care of Lady Somerleyton's hospital at 17 Park Lane, London, where he remained for three months. A fellow officer wrote to say how sorry he was to hear that 'Fritz had perforated' him, but that on reflection 'I always thought that you would get it sooner or later … an enforced rest will probably do you a lot of good!'

A mere week before the Armistice, Daubeny succeeded in getting orders to return to Belgium, even though he was still on crutches. He witnessed the Germans retiring to the Rhine. In addition to his 'double D.S.O.', he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and four times mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 14 November 1916, 4 January 1917, 14 December 1917 and 21 May 1918, refer).

In May 1919 he commenced a 'fruitless' sojourn in Murmansk and in August 1920, he decided to retire from the Army.

King's Messenger

In 1921, Daubeny married Daisie Mary, widow of the late Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Kennard, 15th Hussars, and settled down in Mudeford, near Christchurch. It was from here that he journeyed into London as a newly appointed King's Messenger but growing bored with the commuter run, he volunteered to serve overseas. A spate of fascinating journeys across Europe ensued, usually by international sleeping car. One of his destinations was Warsaw:

'The Embassy dragger, as he was called, used to meet me and take the bags or the representative of the British Government would come in the case of very secret things, which I carried in my pocket.'

During one hot spell in Rome, members of the British Embassy went to the Bay of Naples and the Villa Roseberry. It was from here that Daubeny would cross over the peninsula, through the Corinthian Canal and on to Constantinople, where he would meet Mustapha Kemal:

'He was a great man and the boss of everything. It was he who prevented the Dardanelles campaign being successful during the war period. Our people were still backing the Sultan who was a dead or dying horse, when everybody else was going to Ankara and dealing with the man who really mattered.'

In 1922 he became father to Ralph de Pomeroy Daubeny and returned home to Christchurch, Hampshire.

The Colonel died on 21 September 1967, aged 84. His funeral took place in the Church of St. Margaret, Bagendon, the closing hymn being an appropriate choice: 'Fight the Good Fight.'

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, comprising:

(i)
An original typed manuscript of autobiographical recollections, including family circumstances, education, war experiences and his post-war role as King's Messenger, 13pp.

(ii)
Mention in despatches certificates (3), each in respect of services on the Western Front under Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.

(iii)
A colour portrait photograph; a photograph of Daubeny and his wife on their wedding day and a photograph of their residence, 'The Anchorage'.

(iv)
Birth certificate of G. B. Daubeny, issued 29 October 1897; Marriage and Death Certificates, the latter signed by his son, of 39, Cadogan Place, London, S.W.1.

(v)
Letters from his friends wishing him a speedy recovery from his Great War wounds (5).







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Sold for
£2,600

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This lot is NOT subject to 5% import duty.