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Auction: 8010 - Orders, Decorations, Medals & Militaria
Lot: 222

Three: Private C.R. Fowler, The Honourable Artillery Company 1914 Star, with Bar (1465 Pte. C.R. Fowler. H.A.C.); British War and Victory Medals (1465 Pte. C.R. Fowler. H.A.C. -INF-), nearly extremely fine, with several photographic images of recipient, including one of him in the trenches Estimate £ 180-220 1465 Private Christopher Richard ´´Dick´´ Fowler, native of Ealing, London; served during the Great War with "C" Company 1st Battalion The Honourable Artillery Company on the Western Front from 18.9.1914; in a series of letters sent home to his parents (published by them after the War) he gives incite into his personal experiences of war from his 1st letter home dated 1.11.1914, ´´I guess you are anxious to know how I fared in action. Quite all right. We have had casualties as we must but thank God there might have been hundreds of more and he prevented it..... By gum it was nervy but really great fun in the trenches´´, to his last letter that he ever wrote to them dated 4.3.1915, ´´The nights are the worst part in the trenches, it is nerve wracking and the night is long. All guards are rigidly kept and they have to fire at anything moving and when your eyes are strained in the stillness and the darkness it is surprising how many things move. Whew! You have to be keen and alert always waiting for an attack; every minute seems like ten.... the worst part is being shelled. No little words of mine could tell the thoughts that fill my breast..... it is simply awful.... you crouch under the parapet as low as possible and stick it. You can do nothing else´´; eight days after this letter was written to his parents Fowler was mortally wounded in action at Kemmel when the HAC where supporting a combined attack by the Wiltshire Regiment and the Worcestershire Regiment on the German positions there, his name is one of three listed in the Battalion War Diary as being wounded during the action; he died the next day on the 13th, a letter from a friend (1478 Pte G.F. Brown) to his parents, dated 18.3.1915, gives the details behind his death, ´´I think I can now give you the particulars of dear old Dick´´s death and burial. I hope you won´´t think I am putting everything to blunt but I am no penman and I feel sure you would like to know everything. First of all we had just fired off rifle grenades and were firing to assist the attack. About ten minutes from the start of the attack the Huns turned some machine guns on us and that was what hit Dick. He was hit in the head and the time was about 4.30pm Friday. His last words only a few seconds before he was hit were "come on Bunny, (my nickname), lets give it them hot". He was unconscious when I got to him and never spoke again´´; Fowler is buried in Loker Churchyard, West Vlaanderen, Belgium.

Sold for
£310