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Picture courtesy of Noonan's

CB n/b;
DSC GV HM 1914;
QSA (3) Cape Colony, Paardeberg, Driefontein (Lieut: C. L. Raikes, R.M.A. H:M:S Monarch);
1914 Star (Major G. L. Raikes, R.M. Brigade.);
British War and Victory Medals, with MID (Maj. G. L. Raikes. R.M.A.)

CB London Gazette 3 July 1926.
DSC London Gazette 1 January 1916: ‘For services with the Royal Marine Artillery Heavy Howitzer Brigade in France.’
MID London Gazette 1 January 1916 and 4 July 1919.

George Leonard Raikes was born on 11 April 1878, the son of Colonel G. W. Raikes, K.R.R.C. (Militia). He joined the Royal Marine Artillery in September 1896 as 2nd Lieutenant, becoming Lieutenant in July 1897. He served in South Africa, joining the brigade under Lord Roberts at the Modder River in January 1900, and served with it throughout the campaign. He commanded the Royal Marine detachment from Monarch, with a 4.7-inch gun on an improvised mounting, from 11th to 22nd January at Modder River, and from 18th April to 19th May at and between Bloemfontein and Kronstadt (Medal with three clasps). He was invalided home in July 1900 with Enteric fever. In 1901 he served with the detachment in H.M.S. Ophir during the Colonial tour of TRH the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. He was employed on the Staff at RN College, Osborne, 1903-06, was Instructor of Wireless Telegraphy, Atlantic Fleet, 1908-09, and similarly at H.M.S. Vernon 1909-10. Appointed Instructor of Gunnery in 1911, he was, in 1912, appointed Member of a Committee to consider the defence of Scapa Flow, where he was serving until September 1914.

In October 1914, Raikes was posted to the Royal Marine Artillery 12-pounder Battery at Dunkirk. He served subsequently with the R.M.A. Howitzer Brigade in France until April 1919. Raikes commanded No. 2 Battery, from February to December 1915, at the battles of Neuve Chapelle, Frezenberg Ridge and Loos. He then took over Command of No. 6 Battery on the Somme and took part in the battle of Albert, the first battle of the Scarpe, the battle of Bullecourt, action in the Hindenburg Line, and all the battles of the Flanders Offensive from August 1917, culminating in the second battle of Paschendaele. In March 1918 his battery took part in the battle of St Quentin and in August he assumed command of No. 1 Siege Battery, an amalgamation of Nos. 5 and 6 Batteries, taking part in the battle of the St Quentin Canal in September and October 1918.

Promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in May 1921, Raikes became Colonel Commandant in April 1928, was ADC to the King, 1928-29, and was promoted to Major-General at the end of that year. He retired in June 1930 and died at South Brent, Devon, on 11 October 1949, the first ever DSC recipient to achieve General rank.

Raikes was an outstanding sportsman and played Rugby football for the United Services from 1898 until 1914. He was also highly proficient with the bayonet, revolver and rifle, winning many prizes throughout his career.

Sold with small oval silver medal ‘T.R.H. Duke & Duchess of Cornwall & York. British Colonies 1901. HMS Ophir’, in damaged glazed frame with ring suspension; two Great War identity discs; various officers’ pips; a sliver napkin ring inscribed with his many appointments, services and ships; and 21 shooting and bayonet prize medals, viz Royal Naval and Military Tournament for Bayonet Competitions 1914 (1 silver, 1 bronze, both 1st prize and both named); Royal Tournament medals for Bayonet Competitions 1922-27 (6 silver, 8 bronze, all named); Royal Marines Rifle Association silver medal 1914 (Capt.), and silver cross 1929 (Brigadier); and three Royal Marines bronze medals for revolver shooting, with various dated bars etc., 1903-27, these three unnamed.

Picture courtesy of Noonan's

E&W Africa 1887 (1) Witu 1890 (Sub. Lieut. F. W. Dean. R.N. H.M.S. Redbreast.);
QSA (5) Belmont, Modder River, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Relief of Kimberley, clasps mounted in this order (Lieut: F. W. Dean, R.N. H.M.S. Monarch) impressed naming;
1914-15 Star (erased);
BWM and WM (erased);
Khedive’s Sudan 1896-1908, no clasp, unnamed as issued;
Royal Humane Society, small bronze medal (successful), (Lieut. F. W. Dean, R.N., 18th December 1893.) complete with integral brooch buckle, pin removed

Frederick William Dean was born in Newburn, near Swindon on 20 July 1868, and entered the Royal Navy as a Cadet in the training ship Britannia in January 1882. Appointed a Midshipman in October 1884, he was advanced to Sub Lieutenant aboard H.M.S. Calypso in October 1888. Having then obtained a 1st Class Certificate in Seamanship, he was appointed for navigational duties in the Redbreast on the East Indies station in February 1890. And in October of the same year he was landed for service with the Naval Brigade sent to punish the Sultan of Witu for the massacre of a party of Europeans. Here, then, the backdrop to his first mention in despatches, Vice-Admiral Sir Edmund Fremantle reporting that he ‘acted as Orderly Officer to myself and Captain Curzon-Howe and was most zealous and active.’ (London Gazette 6 January 1891, refers).

Promoted to Lieutenant in January 1892, Dean gained further navigational experience in the Hearty and the Gleaner, prior to seeing active service in the Scout off the coast of Sudan in 1896, for which he received the Khedive’s Medal, without clasp. And in the following year he received his first command, the Sparrowhawk, on the North American station.

But it was not until joining the Monarch as her Senior Lieutenant in January 1899 that he embarked on the most distinguished chapter of his career, namely his command of naval guns ashore during the opening phases of the Boer War. Such was the prominence of his role in the action at Graspan in November 1899, that he submitted his own report for publication in Admiral Sir Robert Harris’s despatch. And that report eventually appeared in the London Gazette on 30 March 1900, from which the following extract has been taken:

‘ … I then waited until the Royal Artillery with six guns took up a position on my right front and opened fire on the enemy. I did the same, and subsequently advanced to ranges of 4,000 yards and ultimately 2,800 yards, acting from time to time on requests I received from the officer commanding Royal Artillery, who was attacking the same position, viz., two strongly fortified kopjes on either side of the railway with a well protected gun in each.
About 8 a.m. I received verbal orders to retire from my position, as the Royal Artillery were about to move away to the right, and it would then be untenable for my two guns. The Royal Artillery were already moving off when I got the order, and the Boer guns, having got our range, were pouring on us such an effective shrapnel fire, that I judged it impossible to carry out the order without either leaving the guns or suffering very heavy losses, both amongst our own men and the company of Royal Engineers who were helping us, if we attempted to retreat with them.

I, therefore, continued to fire as briskly as possible at the Boer guns, with such effect that we continuously put them out of action, for as much as 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Their shells burst with utmost accuracy, and both our guns and ammunition trolly were spattered all over with shrapnel balls; but, owing to my system of making all hands lie down when we saw their guns flash and remain until the shell burst and the balls flew by, we had only six men wounded when, at 9.30 a.m., the Boers finally ceased firing and abandoned position … ’

Dean was himself specially mentioned by Captain A. E. Merchant, R.M.L.I., who assumed command of the Naval Brigade when his senior officers were killed or wounded: ‘Lieutenant F. Dean who was in command of 4 Naval guns behaved with great gallantry in a very exposed position which was commanded by the enemy and where they were subjected to heavy artillery fire which proved so accurate as to wound 6 men of the guns crews.’

He was again mentioned in Lieutenant Ogilvy’s report to Captain Jones, dated at Ladysmith on 1 March 1900, which brought to notice the uniform good conduct of the officers and men who had been under his immediate command during the operations ending in the Relief of Ladysmith: ‘Lieutenant F. W. Dean, who is now in hospital, I consider worthy of special mention, more especially so as I am sure that his unremitting hard work was largely the cause of his going down when attacked by dysentery.’

Yet further recognition followed in Lord Roberts’s despatch of 31 March 1900, in which Dean was ‘specially promoted to Commander for services with Naval Brigade in South Africa, Admiralty, 2 May 1900.’

The action at Graspan aside, Dean had also commanded his guns at Modder River on 28 November 1899, at the relief of Kimberley on 15 February 1900, at Paardeberg on 17-26 February 1900, and Driefontein on 10 March 1900. Invalided to hospital in the following month, he was embarked in the SS Cymric for the UK in May 1900.

Appointed to the command of Tamar in March 1902, the receiving ship in Hong Kong, he returned home in the summer of 1904 and, following further commands, attended a variety of courses, among them the Senior Officers’ War Course at Portsmouth.

Of his subsequent appointments in the Great War, which encompassed the cruiser Sutlej in the opening months of the conflict and of Devonport’s gunnery school as an Acting Captain, it was his command of the armed merchant cruiser Hilary that proved the most memorable: she was sunk by the U-88 west of the Shetlands on 25 May 1917.

Dean was placed on the Retired List in the rank of Captain at his own request in May 1919; his services were recognised by the award of the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, the whereabouts of which remain unknown.
Earlier, in mid-February 1894, he had been awarded the Royal Humane Society's Bronze Medal for saving the life of Ordinary Seaman William Ringland of the Resolution, who fell into the sea whilst his ship was underway. The next ship astern, the Gleaner, aboard which Dean was serving, saw the incident and tried to lower a boat; this was ineffective and so Dean jumped overboard in full uniform and held the man up for ten minutes until a boat arrived.

Picture courtesy of Spink

QSA (2) Belmont, Modder River (8303 Pte. A. Vass, R.M. HMS Monarch);
[ 1914-15 Star Trio ];

Alexander Vass was born at Creich Buressan, Argyllshire on 25 November 1873 and was a farm servant upon his joining the Royal Marines Light Infantry at Glasgow on 17 April 1895. He joined Monarch in January 1897 and was landed with her Naval Brigade on 21 October 1899 for the Boer War in the support of Durban. The Bluejackets of Monarch comprised some 190 Marines and 50 Seaman, manning their two 12lb Naval Guns adapted by Captain Scott for the purposes. They set off for the relief of Kimberley.

Graspan - severe wounds

At 0700hrs on 25 November 1899, at Graspan, the infantry began to work forward under the cover of artillery fire. The Naval Brigade led the storming force, extended in a single line, each man six paces apart from his neighbour. As they began the ascent, advancing by brief rushes in very open order, the hill suddenly appeared to swarm with enemies; from the crest, from behind every boulder poured a murderous fire. The naval officers of the Brigade still carried swords and could be readily distinguished; they were the target of every Boer rifle. Major Plumbe of the Marines, who was gallantly leading in front of his men, closely followed into the storm of battle by his little terrier, staggered, shouting to his soldiers, not to mind him, but to advance. He never rose again. Colonel Verner, who survived the action, afterwards stated that ‘no better kept line ever went forward to death or glory’. However, so terrible was the fire and so annihilating it’s effects upon the Brigade, that the order had to be given to retire upon the last cover.

For a moment it seemed as though the attack had failed. But the artillery poured its fire upon the crest of the ridge with more vehemence than ever; and up the slopes in very open order, firing and cheering, came the Yorkshire Light Infantry to the support of the hard pressed Naval Brigade, while the Loyal North Lancashire’s and Northumberland’s too, were sweeping forward upon the line of heights held by the Boers. Once more the Seamen and Marines pressed upward at an order from the wounded Captain Prothero ‘Men of the Naval Brigade, advance at the double; take that Kopje and be hanged to it.’ The men responded magnificently. For the last few yards of the advance the Boers could no longer fire with safety at their assailants. Their very position became disadvantageous as the slopes were so steep that they had to stand up to see their assailants, and in the deluge of shrapnel and rifle bullets which beat upon the summit, this meant almost certain death. Lieutenant Taylor of the Navy and Lieutenant Jones of the Marines, the last in spite of a bullet in his thigh, were the first into the Boer entrenchments at the top. They were closely followed by their men, and the Kopje was won.

‘I shall never forget the faces of some of those who had fallen in the final rush,’ said Colonel Verner, of the dead of the Naval Brigade. ‘They lay about in every attitude, many with their rifles, with bayonets fixed, tightly clutched in their hands, and in some cases still held at the charge. These were the same hard featured, clean cut faces, which but a short time before I had watched laboriously skirmishing across the veldt, now pale in death, but with the same set expression of being in terrible earnest to see the business through.’

Vass was one of those who suffered wounds - of a severe nature - in the action. He took a bullet wound to the head, which entered in front of his right ear, passed down his neck and emerged behind the right scapula (Globe & Laurel, January 1900, refers). The gallant Marine was awarded a 'Hurt Certificate' for the wound which, once healed, 'extended from the left side of his head to the right'. He was transferred to Powerful on 2 March 1900.

Promoted Corporal in June 1900, he was presented his Medal & 2 clasps in January 1902 and was made Lance-Sergeant in July 1903.

Reduced Private in August 1904, Vass was discharged in April 1907, going to live at Smollett Street, Bootle. With the outbreak of the Great War, he returned to the fold and was posted to Macedonia (1914-15 Star Trio). Vass was released in February 1919, he was not in receipt of the RFR LS&GC Medal.

The Graspan Royal Marines Memorial, is an outdoor bronze sculpture by Adrian Jones, installed on the north side of The Mall in London. It is the focus of the annual Marines marches.