Beschreibung:

The rare and historically interesting inter-war C.M.G., Great War M.C. group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. F. “Frankie” Thelwall, Commercial Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin 1919-34, late Intelligence Corps: having served as a 1st Class Agent and Gough’s Fifth Army Intelligence Officer 1916-18, he returned to his Foreign Office career in Berlin and witnessed the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler - the compiler of internationally acclaimed annual reports on German politics and economics, he was to make some prophetic and chilling observations on the effects of Nazi rule just prior to his sudden death in 1934 The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G., Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; 1914-15 Star (2 Lieut. J. W. F. Thelwall); British War and Victory Medals (Capt. J. W. F. Thelwall); French Croix de Guerre 1914-1917, with gilt star riband fitment, mounted as worn where applicable, contact marks and somewhat polished but otherwise generally very fine (6) £1800-2200 Footnote C.M.G. London Gazette 1 January 1932. M.C. London Gazette 4 June 1917. John Walter Francis Thewall was born in Klagenfurt, Austria in 1884 and educated abroad, at Ushaw College, Durham and Trinity College, Oxford. A fluent German speaker, he was appointed Vice-Consul at Frankfort-on-the Main in January 1910 and served as Acting Consul there in 1913-14. Intelligence Agent and Officer War was declared by Great Britain on Germany 4 August 1914 and Thelwall was probably lucky to have avoided internment by the German authorities. However he did it, he enlisted as a Private in the 11th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment in September 1914, and was commissioned into the 12th Battalion, Essex Regiment in February 1915. In July of the latter year he was appointed to the Intelligence Corps and transferred to the General List, shortly thereafter proceeding to France, where he was attached to Headquarters Indian Cavalry Corps. And he subsequently rose swiftly as an Intelligence Officer, being attached to Headquarters XIIIth Corps, December 1915, and to Headquarters Fifth Army, August 1916, gaining advancement to 1st Class Agent with the rank of Captain that December, in addition to his awards of the Military Cross in June 1917 and the French Croix de Guerre in April 1918. Further research is needed to determine exactly what Thelwall did as an Intelligence Agent and Officer in Gough’s Fifth Army, both before and after the German Spring Offensive of March 1918, but a recommendation in his service record for his promotion to substantive rank gives some indication. Dated 19 April 1918, it recommends that Thelwall ‘is forwarded for favourable consideration with a view to his being granted the rank of substantive Captain ... This Officer has been 1st Intelligence Officer at an Army H.Q. since 11 April 1916, and has done extremely good work since the Offensive which commenced on March 21st. It is largely owing to his efficiency that the situation with the regard to the number of German Divisions employed against this Army has been so closely followed.’ Berlin, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich Thelwall served with the Foreign Office at the British Embassy in Berlin from 1919 to 1934, witnessing the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party, until his untimely death following an operation aged only 49 years. His obituary in The Times on 18 May 1934 records that: ‘The advance of the British troops to Cologne in 1918 again brought “Frankie” Thelwall – for thus he was called by all who knew him – to the country for which he had a deep friendship and whose language he spoke so well, in which he had already spent several years of his life, and in which he was destined to end it. At first attached to the British Military Mission under General Malcolm, he was in 1919 appointed, pending the resumption of diplomatic relations, senior