Description
Military Cross, 1914-15 Star, British War and Victory Medal, with MID oak leaf, Captain Edward Maurice Ford, Royal Army Service Corps.
Military Cross, unnamed as issued, 1915 Star impressed: “2. Lieut E. M. Ford. A.S.C.”, WW1 Pair impressed: “Capt E. M. Ford.”
Military Cross award announced in the London Gazette, 1st January 1918.
Click here for a link to the Imperial War Museum artist page for his son Michael Ford.
Edward Maurice Ford was born on 17th September 1882 in Basingstoke. He was the son of Alfred Ford and Elizabeth Dellen, a farmer, Edward grew up on the farm at Poveys Farm in Ramsdale, Basingstoke.
His peaceful time farming was interrupted by the 1st World War,
He was granted a Commission as 2nd Lieutenant on 7th April 1915 and posted to France to serve with the 18th Divisional Train.
Advanced to Captain on 5th June 1917, for which he served for the remainder of the war.
Once he returned home from the war, he got back to farming and later became Managing Director of a seed merchant business at Overton, Winchester.
Having been working in Farming on the outbreak of the war he volunteered as an Air Raid Precautions Warden according to the 1939 Register.
He later died during 1964 in Winchester, Hampshire, not before having seen his son Michael Ford, who overcame being born deaf to live an interesting life as a well known British Artist, selling numerous wartime paintings to the WAAC now held by the Imperial War Museum, he saw his son go from a Coal Miner helping his father on a farm to having exhibited his works at the Royal Academy, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the New English Art Club, Royal Society of British Artists, Towner Art Gallryer in Eastbourne and in the Paris Salon.
His painting “War Weapons Week in a Country Town” is illustrated in Eric Newton’s 1945 Book, “War Through Artists’ Eyes”.
His son still kept a long running contract however with Farmers Weekly to portray a featured Farmer or Landowner.
On 28th July 1920 his son Michael Ford was born, however due to his wife having contracted Rubella whilst pregnant he was born deaf.
Ford’s wife ran a Home School on the family farm and by 1937 his son Michael would be accepted to study Art at Goldsmith’s College from 1937-40.
Due to his deafness his son was spared active service, Michael joined the Local Defence Volunteers which soon became the Home Guard, and still worked part time as a Coal Miner whilst doing farm work.
He also learnt to ride a motorbike and became a despatch rider. He continued painting and submitted numerous pictures to War Artists Advisory Committee, WAAC.
The first painting to be accepted was “Home Guards Brewing Tea just before Dawn” which he had first sketched in a shepherd’s hut whilst waiting to go on Home Guard Duty. The painting is now held in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.
After a refusal of a picture of a Land Girl, the WAAC accepted another of his pictures, War Weapons Week in a Country Town and included it in their ongoing National Gallery exhibition.
In 1942 the WAAC would buy “Italian prisoners-of-war Working on the Land” for 15 Guineas and was one of only a few depictions of prisoners of war acquired by the WAAC.
