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Auction: 19001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 688

(x) An early Great War casualty's group of three awarded to Rifleman J. Williams, King's Royal Rifle Corps, who was killed in action on 19 September 1914 during the "Race to the Sea"

1914 Star, with clasp (7246 Pte. J. Williams, 1/K.R. Rif: C.); British War and Victory Medals (7246 Pte. J. Williams, K.R. Rif. C.), together with the recipient's Memorial Plaque 1914-18 (John Williams), in card envelope of issue, very fine (4)

John Williams was stationed at Aldershot with 6th Brigade, 2nd Division, when war broke out in August 1914. He proceeded to France with the 1st Battalion, K.R.R.C, and likely saw service with his battalion at the Battle of Mons on 23 August where the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons-Conde Canal against the advancing German 1st Army under General von Kluck. Outnumbered 3:1, it was here that the British managed to withstand the German onslaught for 48 hours, preventing the French Fifth Army from being outflanked. It was here too that the French's army came away from the battle with a clear sense that it had got the upper hand; according to Captain Walter Bloem, infantry officer and novelist, in The Advance from Mons 1914: The Experiences of a German Infantry Officer:

'The men all chilled to the bone, almost too exhausted to move and with the depressing consciousness of defeat weighing heavily upon them. A bad defeat, there can be no gainsaying it … we had been badly beaten, and by the English - by the English we had so laughed at a few hours before'.

The 1st Battalion, K.R.R.C., took part in the retreat from Mons, the First Battle of the Marne and the Battle of the Aisne, where counter-attacks by six French armies and the B.E.F. brought German forces to a halt. It was during the subsequent north-west movement towards the Channel and the consolidation of ground via trench construction, that John Williams was killed.

His name is one of 3740 British officers and men commemorated on the La Ferté-sous-Jouarre Memorial to the Missing, who fell between late August and early October 1914, and have no known grave.


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