2nd Lieutenant Hamo Sassoon

2nd Lieutenant Hamo Sassoon, Royal Engineers, Gallipoli casualty and brother to the decorated poet Siegfried Sassoon: his 1897 pattern dress sword, etched blade numbered 13666, retailed by the Army and Navy Cooperative Society; regulation hilt inscribed "2ND LT HAMO SASSOON, ROYAL ENGINEERS, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY AT SUVLA BAY NOVEMBER 1ST 1915", brown leather covered scabbard; together with a telegram to his mother relaying the news of his injury and death.

Hamo Watts Sassoon was born at the Sassoon family home, Weirleigh, in Kent, on the 4th August 1888. He was educated at Marlborough and at Clare College, Cambridge; and started a career in engineering, working for Messrs. Walker & Co. in Argentina. Returning to England on the outbreak of the First World War he obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers, and he joined the 455th (1st West Riding) Field Company in Gallipoli on the 17th August 1915. On the 28th October he was shot in the leg by a sniper while erecting barbed wire in front of a trench following an advance. Out of consideration for the lives of his companions, he forbore to ask for assistance (since this would have exposed them to fire) and crawled back to his parapet unaided, where he fell into the trench with a shattered left leg. If would seem that this selfless behaviour exacerbated his injury, and in spite of efforts to save him by amputating the leg, he died on board the hospital ship Kildonan Castle, on the 1st November.

His divisional commander described him as "a most gallant officer....liked and respected by everyone who knew him..*"

* De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour.