Orders, Decorations and Medals

An Abyssinia campaign M.C. group of seven awarded to Major J. H. Carmichael, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

Military Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse dated 1942; British War and Victory Medals (2.Lieut.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals, nearly very fine or better (7) £500-550

M.C. London Gazette 27 October 1941.

The following details are taken from a regimental obituary in 1968: Johnny Carmichael was born in 1889 at Coldstream in Berwickshire. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Regiment (A & SH) in October 1916. He served in France and Belgium with the 2nd Bn from May 1917, until he was wounded in April 1918. In 1920 he was appointed ADC (extra) to the Governor of Bombay, being confirmed in that appointment in June 1922 which he held until the end of 1923. He subsequently served in the west Indies and in NorthChina, where he was posted to the British Legation Guard in Peking. He returned to the UK at the end of 1933, was appointed Adjutant of the 7th Bn in January 1934, and retired in 1935. Recalled to the Army on the outbreak of war in 1939, he was posted to the 1st Bn in Palestine, and with that Bn he took part in the battle of Sidi Barrani in December 1940 and in the Crete Expedition of May 1941. His last active engagement was in Abyssinia at the capture of Gondar where he had the misfortune to be travelling along with others in a vehicle which ran into an uncharted minefield and was blown up. He was very severely wounded in both ankles, wounds which were to incapacitate him for the rest of his life, end his active service career and lead to his premature retirement, and finally 26 years later to the amputation of one foot. The obituary states that his M.C. was for services in Crete but other sources suggest that it was for Eritrea.