345 - An India General Service Medal 1908 with clasp ‘Waziristan 1919-21’, for service on the North West Frontier of India, to a young soldier of the Devonshire Regiment

An India General Service Medal 1908 with clasp ‘Waziristan 1919-21’, for service on the North West Frontier of India, to a young soldier of the Devonshire Regiment with a most interesting and unusual career history: India General Service Medal 1908 (GVR Kaisar-i-Hind) with clasp ‘Waziristan 1919- 21’ named to: 5430409 Pte W Martin F Dvl Signals (‘F’ Divisional Signals). William Henry Martin was born in the second quarter of 1902, at Falmouth, Cornwall, the son of Thomas Martin, a mariner. He enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) on 30 November 1916, giving his date of birth as 1 March1900 but in reality aged just fourteen. He was immediately embodied – “called out for service with the Royal Navy” – and posted to the ‘Dreel Castle’ for training, after which he served for two years on the anti-submarine net blockade in the Strait of Otranto (channel between Italy and Albania), during which he survived the sinking by the Austro-Hungarian Navy of the drifter on which he was serving, aged just fifteen. The Allied navies of Italy, France and Great Britain, by blockading the strait, mostly with light naval forces and lightly armed fishing vessels known as drifters, hindered the cautious Austro- Hungarian Navy from freely entering the Mediterranean Sea, and effectively kept them out of the naval theatre of war. The blockade was known as the & Otranto Barrage. However, the barrage was notoriously ineffective against the German and Austrian U-boats operating out of the Adriatic, which were to plague the Allied powers for most of the war throughout the Mediterranean. Following his discharge from the RNR on 30 May 1919, Martin immediately enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (DCLI) on 5 June 1919; he appears to have transferred to the Second Battalion the Devonshire Regiment, and was subsequently posted to India where, as a regimental signaller, he was seconded to ‘F’ Divisional Signals, with whom he served on the North West Frontier. The medal rolls show that he was also entitled to the clasp ‘Waziristan 1921-24’ and, for his WW1 service, he would have been entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal although, unfortunately, the whereabouts of these medals is not known. With copy RNR service record, WW1 Medal Index Card (MIC) and extracts from medal rolls. The medal has some light obverse contact marking (indicating that he wore this medal with his WW1 medals), otherwise Good Very Fine (GVF) condition.