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Auction: 18001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 56

'I still have a notebook dictated by her which contains the pianist's survival kit of technique - full of practical and sound advice, tempered and honed by her great experience as a teacher. War service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force brought her the award of the B.E.M. of which she was very proud.'

Royal College of Music Magazine, Vol. 79, No. 3 (1983), 108., refers.

A rare Second World War B.E.M. group of three awarded to Flight Sergeant H. M. Klein, Women's Auxiliary Air Force, who served at R.A.F. Medmenham as a Photographic Interpreter

British Empire Medal, Military Division, G.VI.R., 1st issue (422406 Fl./Sgt. Hilda M. Klein W.A.A.F.); Defence and War Medals 1939-45, extremely fine (3)

B.E.M. London Gazette 1 January 1946.

Hilda Minnie Klein was born in October 1896 at 42 Alfred Street, Bow, London. Her father Alfred Lipman Klein was a jewellery warehouse supervisor. A talented pianist, Klein entered the Royal College of Music on 23 September 1915 and studied there for 19 terms. She won numerous prizes, became an Associated Board examiner and held a teaching post until the late 1960s.

Klein enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at Harrogate on 30 September 1940. Promoted to Corporal on 24 January 1941, she was trained as a Photographic Interpreter (P.I.) and transferred to R.A.F. Medmenham in Buckinghamshire on 17 April 1942. The station was the R.A.F.'s Central Interpretation Unit, responsible for analysing air photographs and producing reports of enemy positions. The unit issued target maps to No. 617 Squadron prior to the Dambusters' Raid, and kept close tabs upon the Tirpitz in her Norwegian lair. Klein would have made detailed models of airfields, naval bases and missile sites, gleaning accurate information for the landings in North Africa, Italy and Normandy. Churchill was a regular visitor for his daughter Sarah was a Section Commander at Medmenham, and Klein would no doubt have crossed their paths. Promoted Flight Sergeant on 1 June 1942, she was discharged on 14 September 1945 and died at Hove, Sussex, on 7 June 1981.

Sold with original boxes of issuance, the campaign medals addressed to 'Miss H. M. Klein, Hopkinson House, 88 Vauxhall Bridge Road, Victoria, S.W.1', congratulatory letter upon the award of the B.E.M., related riband bars and a copy of Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos, by Christine Halsall.

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Sold for
£550

Sale 18001 Notices
The recipient was also Mentioned in Despatches (London Gazette 1 January 1945, refers) and is sold together with her emblem.