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Auction: 19001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 482

' … The worst of the thing was the marching over the desert. We are having stormy weather just now. It has been raining continually for the last week. Yesterday we had a sand storm which almost blinded us and today the wind is trying its hardest to blow us off the face of the desert altogether, while the rain is doing its best to drown us. So altogether we are having a pretty good time of it … '

James Gavine of the 1/7th Battalion, Scottish Rifles, writing to his sister in January 1917.

Four: Lance-Corporal J. Gavine, 1/7th Scottish Rifles (Cameronians), afterwards 3rd Battalion and 3rd City of Glasgow Home Guard, who was wounded in Palestine in December 1917

1914-15 Star (1876 Pte. J. Gavine, Sco. Rif.); British War and Victory Medals (1876 Pte. J. Gavine, Sco. Rif.); Defence Medal 1939-45, good very fine or better (4)

James 'Jim' Gavine was born in on 6 January 1893 and enlisted in the Scottish Rifles (Cameronians) in October 1914. Embarked with the 1/7th Battalion for Gallipoli in June 1915, he was wounded in the ankle in August, in addition to going down with pleurisy; he was invalided home.

He subsequently returned to his unit and saw action in Egypt and Palestine and was wounded by a gunshot to his right leg on 17 November 1917. Admitted to No. 43 Stationery Hospital, Gaza, he was evacuated home but ended the war back on active service, as a Lance-Corporal in the 3rd Battalion in France.

During the Second World War Gavine served in the Machine Gun Company of the 3rd City of Glasgow Home Guard, from May 1940 until December 1944. He died on 26 September 1966.

Sold with an impressive archive of original documentation, including casualty reports forms, military passes and Field Post communications, in addition to a 6pp. letter to his sister, Leha, dated 2 January 1917; together with a quantity of documents relevant to his time in the Home Guard and several photographs.

Also sold with the front of portion of a papier mache Turkish cigarette case, 'found in a Turkish camp at Bir-el-Abd, 1916'; his old hand-written note, refers.


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Sold for
£500