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Auction: 19002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 398

A fine B.E.M. pair awarded to Auxiliary Station Officer H. L. Watts, London County Council, Auxiliary Ambulance Service, who operated from Station No. 180, Battersea

British Empire Medal, (Civil) G.VI.R. (Hilda Lillian, Mrs Watts.); Defence Medal 1939-45, extremely fine and scarce (2)

11 B.E.M.s awarded to the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service during the Second World War.

B.E.M. London Gazette 11 June 1942.

Hilda Lillian Watts, a native of London, was born in 1902, the daughter of a book polish manufacturer and herself a driver mechanic by trade. Having married on Christmas Eve 1920, she was divorced in 1931, having eloped with Jack Watts of Poynder's Road, Clapham Park, and re-married.

Watts served with the Auxiliary Ambulance Service during the Second World War at Station No. 180, based at the Honeywell Road School, Battersea, which worked throughout the carnage of the Blitz and well beyond to provide immediate care after air raids. From approximately 130 stations and numbering 10,000 volunteers at their height, the Service drove into action in converted commercial vans to collect the wounded and deceased victims of bombings, whatever the situation.

Besides 11 B.E.M.s, they also earned 3 G.M.s and 5 King's Commendations. Mr and Mrs Watts were living at 4 Nightingale Lane, Battersea in the 1960s; sold together with her Ambulance Service pin Badge and a quantity of copied research, together with a copy of The Forgotten Service.

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Sold for
£500