Previous Lot Next Lot

Auction: 23003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 81

'Cooks stopped shooting pigs to conserve ammunition for the Nazi variety, and the batmen "watched their front" from 10 a.m. Everyone saw plenty - an S.S. battalion in column of fours, the swarms of enemy tanks. Then the reinforcements arrived - a 25-millemetre anti-tank gun with a team of four officers - and four shells!

The general situation was now rapidly deteriorating. Regular contacts were impossible due to enemy armour and infantry penetrating in all directions; information was non-existent, and before long headquarters, battalions and companies, and platoons were surrounded, cut off, and broken up. Much of the rear area was already either in German control or menaced by the presence of enemy armour. Out of this chaos those who could fell back towards the coast at Dunkirk almost by instinct … '

The fate of the 6th Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders in France in May 1940; the regimental history refers.

An inter-war North-West Frontier pair awarded to Lance-Corporal M. Bradley, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, who was posted 'missing' in France in May 1940 but afterwards confirmed as a P.O.W

India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, North West Frontier 1935 (2977831 Pte. M. Bradley, A. & S.H.); India General Service 1936-39, 1 clasp, North West Frontier 1936-39 (2977831 Pte. M. Bradley, A. & S.H.), good very fine or better (2)

Michael Bradley was born in Greenock, Scotland on 28 November 1912 and enlisted in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders in November 1930.

Having then seen active service on the North-West Frontier in the mid-1930s, he joined the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940, as a Lance-Corporal in the 6th Battalion. And it was in this capacity that he was posted missing on 27 May 1940; WO 417/20 refers.

Subsequently confirmed as a P.O.W., he was incarcerated in Stalag VIII-B from July 1940 to January 1944, and in Stalag VIII-A from October 1944 until his liberation in May 1945. In the interim, he was employed in a working party at a sawmill.

In his M.I.9 debrief on liberation, Bradley stated that he had 'destroyed thousands of cement bricks used for building houses', in addition to some electric lights in a factory in November 1944.

Subject to 20% VAT on Buyer’s Premium. For more information please view Terms and Conditions for Buyers.

Sold for
£350

Starting price
£160