Throughout the First World War, the many announcements of British and Commonwealth gallantry awards appeared in the various issues of The London Gazette. As part of our major monthly series covering the period of the Great War commemorations, we examine some of the actions involved and summarise all of the awards announced in October 1918.
A number of awards to Royal Navy personnel featured in the pages of The London Gazette during October 1918. Amongst the names on the 5th was that of Commander Paul Whitfield. At the time of the announcement of Whitfield’s award of the Distinguished Service Order, he was a ‘Prisoner of War interned in a neutral country’, though the DSO was in recognition of his actions at the Battle of Jutland back in 1916.
During this epic naval encounter, Whitfield, then a lieutenant commander, was in charge of the M-class destroyer HMS Nomad. She was lost in a night action after screening the First Battle Cruiser Squadron as part of the Thirteenth Destroyer Flotilla. In a letter written from a German naval hospital on 8 June 1916, Whitfield gave the following account of Nomad’s last few hours:
“Our misfortune lay in getting a shell from one of their light cruisers clean through a …
