Description

Offered is a First World War pair of medals to Gunner W. Horsfall, Royal Artillery, who was taken prisoner of war during the Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918

British War and Victory Medal (1914 – 18), impressed named 114590 GNR. W. HORSFALL. R.A. comes with copies M.I.C. medal rolls, casualty clearing station book extract, POW list, newspaper clipping and 1939 census.

William Horsfall was born on the 2/9/1895 at Rochdale, Lancashire. His records appear to have been destroyed during the ‘Blitz’ in WW2, however what is known is that he enlisted about September 1915 and landed in France around October 1916. He was serving with ‘D’ Battery 104^th Brigade Royal Artillery 12/9/1917, as a signaller when he was admitted to No 11 Casualty Clearing Station with a ‘contusion to left eye’. He was taken prisoner of war (POW) on the 21/3/1918 in or around Maissemy (village about 5 kilometres north-west of St. Quentin and about two kilometres north of the small town of Vermand) still listed as a signaller R.F.A on the POW records. He was released at the end of the war returning home to Rochdale (newspaper 28/12/1918). The 1939 census records him as living in Rochdale working as a ‘commercial traveller’ for a confectionary manufacturer.

D Battery 104^th Brigade was equipped with 18pdr guns and as of the 18/1/1917, it became an Army Field Artillery Brigade. Maissemy was captured by the Germans on the 21st March 1918 (first day of the Kaiserschlacht), in spite of a strong resistance by the 24th Division. As Gunner Horsfall was a signaler it is possible that he was part of the Forward Observation party when the front trenches were over run.