Special Ops DCM group at DNW
The exceptional and important WWII SOE Force 133 Balkan Operations DCM group of eight awarded to Sergeant KAJB Scott, Royal Signals and Special Operations Executive, late King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who was dropped into Eastern Serbia in April 1944, linking up with Major Frank Thompson’s ill-fated Operation Claridges in support of Bulgarian Communist Partisans, sold for a hammer price of £95,000 at Dix Noonan Webb in its auction of Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria. It was being sold together with an important associated archive of material, elements of which include the recipient’s unpublished autobiography of his war years.
As anti-partisan reprisal operations closed in, Thompson took the fateful decision to lead his private army TE Lawrence style into Bulgaria, where, with Scott continuing to serve as wireless operator, they were repeatedly ambushed and fought running battles with the Bulgarian Army and Gendarmerie before being ultimately broken up.
Starving and exhausted, Scott and Thompson were encircled and captured before being subjected to brutal beatings and threats under Gestapo interrogation. Learning of Thompson’s execution, Scott was then compelled to extract intelligence from SOE Cairo via his wireless set but, cleverly ensuring that Cairo were not deceived, at great danger to himself he disclosed nothing, surviving 14 nervewracking weeks under Gestapo orders until finally, with the Red Army closing on Sofia, he was released, finding his way to London via Istanbul and Cairo as the only British survivor of the mission.
Also in the sale was the
Women’s Social and Political Union Medal awarded to Miss Nellie Godfrey, who was arrested and imprisoned for throwing a missile at Winston Churchill’s car as he attended an election rally in Bolton in December 1909, which fetched £10,000, with the proceeds being donated to the Fawcett Society.
Felicia Willow, Fawcett Society Chief Executive commented, “We are truly delighted to hear that Nellie’s medal sold for £10,000 at auction and would like to thank the donor again for their generous donation to the Fawcett Society. This incredible piece of history has brought us all closer to
Nellie Godfrey's heroic story, and reminds us that we can all play a part in making equality a reality.”
Next was a group of 12 medals which sold for a hammer price of £30,000. The group had belonged to Group Captain JRH Merifield, who was an outstanding individual in WWII - he was widely recognised as one of the finest Mosquito and Photo Reconnaissance Unit pilots of the war. He flew in over 160 operational sorties and took the first photograph of a V1 flying bomb on a launch ramp at the Luftwaffe test installation at Peenemunde on the Baltic Island of West Usedom.
Mr Mellor-Hill noted, “The hammer price of £30,000 for Merifield’s awards and medals is a reflection of his recognition as one of the best reconnaissance pilots of WWII and the man who first photographed the notorious V1 missile and brought its existence to light. He was attached to the US Air force in the Korean War and was further decorated for gallantry by the Americans making him one of the most decorated pilots in the RAF before sadly being killed in a test flying accident in 1961.”
Elsewhere, from Part 1 of the Collection of David Lloyd, was an outstanding Post-War Borneo operations MM group of three awarded to Captain (QGO) Ramprasad Pun, 2/2nd Gurkha Rifles, who opened the firefight on Operation Hell Fire in September 1965, which sold for £13,000. With his forward section of 10 Gurkhas facing a force of 100 terrorists, he stood his ground, firing his Bren gun from the hip and causing the enemy countless casualties.
Meanwhile, £14,000 was achieved for a well-documented post-war Air Observation Post
DSO group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel JMH Hailes, Royal Artillery. He specialised in the hazardous task of flying light, slow, cramped and unarmed Auster spotter planes over hostile territory in Palestine, Malaya, and Korea in the face of determined opposition and dangerous circumstances but nonetheless always attempted to engage enemy targets. These efforts also saw him being twice Mentioned in Despatches.
In Korea he identified and fixed Chinese artillery positions for counter-bombardments by 1 Commonwealth Division or by US heavy guns. Mr Mellor-Hill explained, “This was a rare award of a DSO for military rather than air force flying and dangerous reconnaissance work in spotter planes that required cool headed bravery in the Korean War which was a hard fought campaign that ebbed and flowed with much loss of life and suffering.”