THE OUTSTANDING DSO GROUP OF FIVE TO LT COL PLEYDELL - RAILSTON

The medals are housed in a contemporary frame.

Sold by direct order of the family.  

Henry George Moreton Pleydell - Railston was born in Hamilton Lanarkshire in 1886. The son of Colonel Henry Edward Railston and Magdalene Railston. In 1920 he added 'Pleydell' to his name via Deed Poll., combining his name and his wife's maiden name. 

Henry was educated at Wellington College and attended Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade as a Second Lieutenant on the 13th of August 1904. Railston was promoted to Lieutenant on the 24th of April 1908 and Captain on the 4th of October 1913. 

With the 1st Bn Rifle Brigade, Railston landed in France on the 8th of February 1915. On the night of the 28th to the 29th of April 1915, the 1st Bn, along with battalions from the London Rifle Brigade, Somerset Light Infantry and the Hampshire Regiment, dug new trenches five thousand yards long in the Grafenstafel Sailent near Ypres. 

For actions on the 3rd of May, Railston was awarded the D.S.O., announced in the London Gazette on the 3rd of July 1915.

"Henry George Moreton Railston, Capt., 1st Battn. The Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's

Own). 

For great gallantry at Hannebeck on the 3rd of May, 1915. He was in command of a section of the front-line trench 200 yards long. The trench and all the traverses were smashed by shell fire, and all the garrison except three men were killed or wounded. Capt. Railston had been slightly wounded

and had been buried by a shell, but he continued to defend the trench, 

and displayed the greatest coolness throughout, keeping back the enemy

with rapid-fire. He held the trench, with his small party for several hours,

until it was impossible to reinforce him, and when the question of retirement was mooted, he refused to entertain the suggestion." 

The complete account of his heroics is told in volume II of 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire' pages 798 to 810.

'At about 4:00 am on the 3rd of May, Captain Henry George Moreton Railston, who was in command of a detachment of the 1st Rifle Brigade which occupied a section of the first-line trenches some 200 yards in extent, had just lain down to snatch a couple of hours sleep after a busy night spent in superintending the strengthening of the defences, when he was awakened by a sentry, with the news that the Germans were advancing all along our front, and was scarcely 700 yards distant. 

Captain Railston had, the previous day, got the range of various points between the opposing lines, and springing to his feet, he passed it down the trench, and the "Greenjackets" opened fire on the advancing masses. He himself picked up a rifle and brought down a German officer and two of the men whom he was leading, but his satisfaction at this success was discounted by his own servant who was spotting for him being shot dead at his side. Directly afterwards, some of the German heavy guns opened tremendous enfilading fire on our trenches from behind two houses on the right flank, blowing down both the parapet and the parados of the trench and next demolishing the traverses one after another. A battery of German field guns then came into action on a Ridge opposite our lines about 700 yards distant, and as each traverse crumbled into dust before the fire of the heavy guns preceded to pour a rain of shrapnel upon the unfortunate occupants of the shattered trenches. Captain Railston reported the desperate condition of affairs to battalion headquarters by telephone, the wires of which were shortly afterwards cut, and all further communication suspended. The men about him were now falling fast, and presently a shell burst in his own traverse in the midst of five men.

The outer pair on each side were killed, but marvellous to relate the centre man, though knocked down by the concussion, was uninjured. All the men who were unwounded worked like heroes, some firing, others bandaging in the hurts of their injured comrades and others collecting the ammunition from the bandoliers of those killed and wounded and laying it under the parapet in readiness for those who were still left to use. All this time, the shelling was continuous and very accurate, every shell taking effect on some part of the trench. From our own artillery, there's no reply at all. What few guns we had hereabouts had apparently been put out of action. The trench was soon in a fearful state; most of the parapet and parados had been levelled almost with the ground while the traverses had been blown down and were choked with earth, water, dead and wounded, equipment, ammunition and so forth. 

The Germans were meanwhile advancing all along our front and concentrating in considerable numbers on some dead ground among the standing crops, which we had not had time to level about 250 or 300 yards away. Those directly in front of the trench apparently numbered from 600 to 800. Captain Railston was kept very busy bandaging the wounded and giving morphia to the bad cases and collecting their ammunition with the assistance of the only man left alive in his traverse. At about 10:00 AM it was reported to him that scarcely a man remained unwounded in the right section of the trench. In his own part of it, there was only one Rifleman and two signallers beside himself, and soon afterwards, a shell burst in the signaller's dugout, blowing one man to bits and badly wounding the other. He looked about for the last remaining Rifleman to help him lift the uninjured signaller into his own dugout, which was still intact though full of wounded men and found that he too had been hit. He bandaged up the signaller and gave him morphia and then found that he was all alone. Not a single man was insight, or at least not a man capable of keeping his feet. He worked his way along the debris of the trench to his left, intending to find where the nearest men were and getting a message through to battalion headquarters and finding three of his men about 50 yards along the trench sat down and talked to them for some time, the shelling being too heavy just then for anyone to move about at all. Presently when it temporarily subsided a little, he made his way along further to the left and found the remnant of two and a half platoons of territorials who were attached to his company. They told him that they had two officers killed and all their non-commissioned officers and half of their men either killed or wounded. He found their Captain, who had been hit through the head, not quite dead and was proceeding to do what little he could for him when a shell struck the parapet blowing it in on top of the two officers, and they had to be dugout. When he had been extricated from the debris, the unfortunate territorial Captain was dead. 

Captain Railston remained with a remnant of the territorials for some time as they had no officers or non-commissioned officers left and were very disheartened. He ordered them to fix bayonets and get their ammunition out to be in readiness to repel an attack and told them that there were large reinforcements on the way up and that all would soon be well. He then made another attempt to get in touch with battalion headquarters and, working further along the trenches, came upon three men of the next company in a trench on his side of a gap of 10 yards in the parapet. They reported that there was not a man of their company left alive on the other side of the gap; the shelling became again too hot for him to move, and the German field guns had the range of the gap to a yard, as many of the less severely wounded men were trying to make their way along the trench and over a small barricade by this gap to the dressing station, which brought them in view of the battery on the Ridge. 

Captain Railston remained with the three men, all squatting in a very narrow and not too deep trench, while all the wounded men who could manage to crawl along the trench behind them and cross the gap in order to reach the dressing station. Many of them were killed in making the attempt. The three men with whom he had previously stayed, and the remainder of the territorials were all soon killed and wounded, leaving a gap of 400 yards of trench unoccupied saved by himself and these three men, two of whom were killed in the evening. The Germans continued to rain shrapnel upon the trench, and in particular, upon the gap, and many of the men lying badly wounded near it were wounded again or killed outright. 

Captain Railston was himself wounded by a piece of shrapnel in the fleshy part of his arm and had eight holes made by shrapnel in the back of his khaki jacket as he stooped down in the trench. Between bouts of shelling, he and his three comrades kept on shooting at the advancing Germans, running up and down the trench and firing several rounds of rapid whenever an advance was attempted, by which ruse they succeeded in deluding the enemy into the belief that it was still well defended. 

At about midday, the shelling abated, and an orderly threw a message wrapped around a stone across the gap to Captain Railston. The message asked for a report of the situation, and he wrote one and threw it back. About an hour later, some men began to crawl across the gap to reinforce the brave quartet, a manoeuvre which Captain Railston, in the message that had just been sent had reported impossible. The first seven men were all immediately killed or wounded, upon which Captain Railston ordered the others not to attempt to cross the gap and to retire. 

At about 2:30 PM he decided that his last report had probably failed to reach battalion headquarters and determined to try and get across the gap in order to make his way thither and report personally. This he succeeded in doing in safety, being the only man who crossed it without being hit. The trench on the farther side was so blocked up with mud and water and dead and wounded men that he could only make his way along it at intervals. So he crawled along the ground behind the trench, reached the battalion headquarters dugout and reported the situation. 

At dark, about 8:00 PM, a battalion came up to support the few survivors in the battered trenches and between two and three hours later, in accordance with the pre range plan, the whole British force, with the exception of the 12th brigade on our left, which was the pivot of the operation retired to a new position in the rear, the occupation of which, by abandoning the untenable salient greatly strengthened our line. 

Captain Railston and what was left of his command marched from 10:30 PM to 4:00 AM the next morning, the latter part of the journey being performed in a deluge of rain. 

The past week had certainly been a sufficiently eventful one for Captain Railston, he having had several of the narrowest escapes from death imaginable. On April 26, two bullets passed through his cap. On the 27th, a shell burst in his dugout, burying him under 3 feet of earth and debris but providentially leaving his mouth and nose, across which a board had fallen, free so that he was able to breathe. His Burberry, which he was using as a pillow, was riddled through and through with holes, his pack which was underneath his Burberry, had a huge hole in it, and most of his equipment was smashed to pieces. He was wounded very slightly in the knee by a piece of the shell; otherwise, he was dugout intact. On the 28th he had yet another narrow shave, a bullet passing through the pocket of his coat. Captain Henry George Moreton Railston, whose splendid gallantry and coolness throughout the terrible ordeal which we have just described was recognised by the Distinguished Service Order being conferred upon him, is a son of Colonel Henry Edward Railston.' 

Captain Railston served in Macedonia from January 1916 until December 1916. He was promoted to Brevet Major on 3rd June 1917 and Lieutenant Colonel on 3rd June 1918. He commanded the 13th Bn. Black Watch from April 1917 to June 1918; and then commanded the 4th Bn. Rifle Brigade, June 1918 to December. 1918.

Railston was Mentioned in Despatches four times during the Great War and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in September 1919. 

He served as Deputy Lord Lieutenant in the post-war years and passed away on the 23rd of February 1936.