Attributed Princes Mary Gift Box - J Dadd (16th County of London) Queens Westminster Rifles- Friend of Siegfried Sassoon.

A Princess Mary 1914 Gift Box that has been personalised with an inscription as shown in the pictures. 1725 Rifleman Julian Dadd served in France from 11 December 1914 until commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in October 1915. Siegfried Sassoon dedicated a poem to Julian Dadd.

The poem ‘A Whispered Tale’ by War Poet, Writer and Soldier Siegfried Sassoon was dedicated to Julian Dadd – of C Company, Royal Welsh Fusiliers , who was shot in the throat at Ginchy, during the Battle of the Somme (N. France) in 1916. The injury rendered him a ‘permanent vocal cripple’, this after the traumatic loss of his two brothers. He committed suicide in Hampshire in 1937.

I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been,
With stories of the glories that they’d seen.
But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well
In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell,
Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,
Endured experience in your queer, kind face,
Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes,
And both your brothers killed to make you wise;
You had no babbling phrases; what you said
Was like a message from the maimed and dead.
But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note
Was muted when they shot you in the throat;
And still you whisper of the war, and find
Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

His Brothers Stephen and Edmund were killed in action. Stephen at Gallipoli in 1915 with the RND his brother Edmund in 1916 whilst serving with the RWF. Edmund earned the MC posthumously.