Orders, Decorations and Medals

Four: Warrant Officer G. J. Stephens, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, a gallant Dakota pilot of the “Combat Cargo Task Force” in Burma 1944-45: he completed over 700 operational hours on parachute supply missions, in addition to collecting numerous casualties from advanced airstrips

1939-45 Star; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, generally good very fine (4) £250-300

Garfield John Stephens, who was born in March 1922, enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in London in August 1941 and, having been selected for pilot training, was embarked for Durban, South Africa - but it was actually at No. 25 E.F.T.S. in Salisbury, Rhodesia, that he commenced his elementary training in May 1942. Awarded his “Wings” in November, Stephens attended further courses in South Africa prior to returning to the U.K. in June 1943.

Ordered overseas in April of the following year, he was embarked for the Middle East, and thence India, where he was posted to No. 66 Squadron that October, the beginning of a long operational tour in the unit’s Dakotas - by the end of the same month he had flown six parachute supply sorties, all in support of the Allied advance in Burma, and all as part of the newly established Combat Cargo Task Force.

Here, then, the R.A.F’s famous “down the chimney” supply operations at work, No. 66 and other Dakota squadrons being charged with delivering every imaginable type of equipment to the hard-pressed 14th Army - as Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, the Air C.-in-C. South-East Asia, put it, ‘The Armies advanced on the wings of the Air Force’. And in the words of the R.A.F. historian Chaz Bowyer, ‘the task called for spot accuracy in supply dropping, needle-sharp navigation, and no little courage to take a relatively slow, unarmed aircraft between the lush green-carpeted mountains and into the dank steaming valleys of Burma. Yet every supply captain and crew member was only too conscious of his responsibility to the men on the jungle floor, and each discharged that responsibility faithfully and constantly’ (For Valour, The Air VCs, refers).

Every supply captain and crew member also knew the risks:

‘Over the forward airstrips the air transports sometimes circled in a queue, waiting their turn to come in. They continued to land by flare throughout the night. It was a 24-hour-7-day-a-week service that the Combat Cargo Task Force operated ... Though the transports operated as a bus service, it was one which frequently finished its final stage under fire. The Allied fighters held off any Japanese interference, but the transports which were dropping supplies on front line troops flew through enemy machine-gun bullets and mortar shells, and some were hit ... ’ (The Campaign in Burma, H.M.S.O., 1946 refers).

Nor did 66’s hectic operational agenda merely include supply sorties, for by early 1945 the squadron’s Dakotas were landing fresh troops at these advanced airstrips - and collecting the wounded - Stephens undertaking many such sorties, especially in the lead up to the capture of Mandalay and Rangoon: in fact, by the end of his tour, in September 1945, he had flown over 700 operational hours.

Next posted to No. 76 Squadron at Poona, another Dakota unit, he was employed on troop transport duties until taking up a ground appointment in Bombay. Stephens eventually returned to the U.K. in May 1946 and was released at R.A.F. Kirkham in the following month.

Sold with the recipient’s original Flying Log Books (2), an R.A.F. type covering the periods May 1942 to March 1945, and an Air Forces of India type the period April 1945 to March 1946, weak spines, contents good; together with his R.A.F. Service and Release Book, and a 62 Squadron blazer patch.