C & T Auctioneers and Valuers Ltd
Lot 505
First World War Battle of Cambrai Tank Corps Section Commander Tank Mask, Belonging to Captain John King Wilson, 14th (London Scottish) Battalion London Regiment, Later Commanding Officer 7 Section, I Battalion Tank Corps, Who’s Tank Received Two Direct Hits on Welsh Ridge Resulting in Him Being Wounded and Sent to Sidcup Hospital Where he was Treated by the Plastic Surgery Pioneer Sir Harold Gillies, Leather covered steel face section with slotted eye section. Chamois covered reverse. Complete with chainmail linked bottom. The brown leather covering has become very dry and flaking. This mask was originally found along with a number of uniform items relating to this officer, sadly the lot has been split up over the years. John King Wilson enlisted as a private into the British Army on the outbreak of the First World War, being an original member of the 14th (London Scottish) battalion London Regiment, and landed with them in September 1914 before being involved in the 1st Battle of Ypres where he was involved in savage fighting around Messines Ridge and the woods around Klein in Zillebeke, where his battalion suffered heavy losses. He also participated in the Battle of Aubers Ridge as well as the Battle of Loos. In 1916, He commissioned into the Heavy branch of the Machine Gun Corps before being transferred to 26th Company, I Battalion Tank Corps. Whilst training in Bovington before leaving for France in the spring of 1917, Wilson was a friend of the 2 OC of the battalion, Captain Clement Atlee, the future Prime Minister of Great Britain. Before landing in France in the late summer of 1917, Wilson was promoted to captain and given command of 7 Section just prior to the battle of Cambrai, where he was in command of a section of 3 tanks, himself being in tank I35. Quickly into the advance, Wilson’s tank is recorded to have destroyed an emplaced trench mortar at R15c.75.92 then ditched in the German front line, after managing to get free and joined the second wave and silenced enemy MGs in La Vacquerie, where he and his crew continued advancing but was suffered two direct hits and was knocked out whilst advancing down the north East slope of Welsh Ridge, seriously wounding Wilson in the Face, which he later wrote about in a memoirs held by the Imperial War Museum, which has been used in numerous books about the Tank battle at Cambrai: “We flattened the machine gun posts that were impeding our infantry’s advance and the isolated posts were easily disposed of by our 6 pounder guns. After penetrating the two front lines, with hindsight the tanks should have halted on the south side of Welsh Ridge, but our sights were on Cambrai. We went rather blindly with the unhappy result that quite a lot of our tanks received direct hits from a German artillery battery laying in the valley below. We were unlucky to receive two hits in as many minuets, the first smashed the left track, leaving the tank exposed when the second hit the broadside…..Badly wounded in my face, I succeeded in escaping the tank and hiding in a shell hole and plastering my face with a field dressing, before fortifying myself with a swig of rum”. After being evacuated to England, he was sent to Sidcup hospital where the wound on his face was treated by the Pioneering plastic surgeon, Sir Harold Gillies, where in Gillies mentions him by name in his biography, Gillies, surgeon extraordinary: “Captain J K Wilson, now of St George Street, Hannover Square, London, was the first casualty to reach Sidcup after the great Tank Corps assault on Cambrai in November 1917”. In Wilson’s later writings, he forever held Harold Gillies and his work in the highest regard. During the Second World War, Wilson served as a Platoon commander in the Hampstead Home Guard, and his day job entailed working at Albemarle Street premises of John Morgan, bespoke tailors, supplying uniforms to officers.
