Croix de Guerre with Bronze Palm 1914-18, awarded to Lieutenant Commander Christopher Francis Eddis.

Lieutenant Commander Eddis entered the Royal Navy in 1902. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1915 and awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1917 for services while in command of HMS ‘Cynthia’ 14 August 1913 – July 1915. He was also Mentioned in Despatches for services in Mesopotamia and for services during operations for the relief of Kut, January –April 1916. The Museum also holds Eddis’s Tuscania Survivors Association medal. The Anchor Line ship ‘Tuscania’ was used as a troop ship during World War I and was torpedoed in 1918 with the loss of 230 lives.

The medal is in the form of a bronze cross pattée superimposed on two crossed swords. The central medallion on the obverse bears the symbolic head of the Republic (Marianne) encircled by the inscription: ‘REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE’. Inscribed on the reverse, ‘1914’ ‘1917’. It is suspended from a watered silk ribbon, green with narrow red edges and five narrow vertical stripes, to which a bronze palm is attached.