Heroic Portsmouth First World War soldier's Victoria Cross Medal seen on BBC Antique's Roadshow up for sale

The honours of James Ockendon will be sold by Nesbits Antiques Auctions in Clarendon Road, Southsea, on May 21. His Victoria Cross (VC) will be part of the lot alongside his Military Medal (MM) and a collection of related items including postcards, letters and dog tags.

Ockendon was the first Portsmouth-born recipient of the VC – the highest military honour for gallantry. He was awarded the MM in Flanders a month before the VC, having also survived the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

His family took the medals to filming for BBC1’s Antiques Roadshow at Portchester Castle in 2023. Expert Mark Smith valued the VC at between £250,000 and £300,000. The family have since decided to put the items up for sale, with Nesbits’ deciding on an estimate of between £220,000 and £260,000 for the Militaria and Maritime Auction.

The soldier was one of nine children born to Alfred and Mary Ockendon on December 10, 1890, at 56 Alfred Street in Landport. Ockendon attended St Agatha’s School before working for Chalcraft’s Drapers in Russell Street, Portsmouth. At the age of 19, he visited his local recruiting office and joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers before completing basic training at the Victoria Barracks in Southsea.

Seeing extensive action during the First World War, he served in India, Turkey during the Battle of Gallipoli, and in the disastrous Dardanelles Campaign where he received a bullet wound to his forehead. While on short leave home, he married his sweetheart Caroline at St Luke’s Church in Greetham Street, Southsea, on August 20, 1917.

Soon after his marriage he joined the First Battalion RDFs at the Western Front in France where he was awarded the Military Medal for bravery on September 28, 1917 during the opening stages of the Third Battle of Ypres. He led his company into the trenches during a heavy enemy bombardment to relieve another company who had become trapped and disconnected from their commanding officers during the previous day's battle.

He wrote: “The enemy spotted us and put up a big barrage”, but undeterred, Ockendon took charge and succeeded in rallying the men to the relative safety of the allied trenches and their unit. Six weeks later, and promoted to sergeant, Ockendon was in action again where his gallantry earned him the VC.

Part of his citation said: “On October 4, 1917 east of Langemark, Belgium, Sergeant Ockendon was acting as company sergeant-major and on seeing the platoon on the right, held up by an enemy machine-gun, he immediately rushed the gun and captured it, killing the crew. He then led a section to the attack on a farm, where under very heavy fire, he rushed forward and called on the garrison to surrender. As the enemy continued to fire on him, he opened fire, killing four, whereupon the remaining 16 surrendered.”

Another statement about his actions added: “Sergeant Ockendon had a charmed life as the battle was in progress with no bullet striking him. When he went over the top there were 115 of the Company and they lost about 15, including two officers. The enemy captured and killed numbered around 50.”

The awarding of his VC was published in The London Gazette on November 5, 1917, and presented with the honour by King George V at Buckingham Palace on December 5, 1917. In April 1918, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre medal, and in the same month he was honourably discharged on medical grounds.

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As a recipient of the VC, Ockendon received invitations to numerous annual meetings of other holders, retaining much of the ephemera, including several menus, one of which he had signed by over 30 fellow VCs. After the war, he worked in Portsmouth Dockyard as a crane driver and then as a school caretaker.

He returned to duty during the Second World War and served in the Portsmouth Division of the Home Guard, qualifying for the WWII Defence Medal. Ockendon Close in Southsea was named in his honour in 1962. He died at home in Southsea on August 29, 1966, and in 2017, a paving slab was unveiled in Norfolk Street next to where his house once stood.

Other items in the auction lot include his discharge certificate, real photographic postcards, and a hallmarked silver badge issued to VCs by Conservative MP Sir Alfred Butt, One of the postcards featured the field funeral of Imperial German soldiers and was inscribed in pencil by Ockenden to his wife. It said: “I took this from a German Soldier who I captured, Jim xxx”