Orders, Decorations and Medals

An interesting ‘Zanzibar uprising’ M.B.E. group of eight awarded to Miss Doris Jones, Territorial Army Nursing Service

The Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Civil) 2nd type; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals; Voluntary Medical Services Medal, silver (Sister Doris Jones) together with T.A.N.S. silver cape badge, nearly extremely fine (8) £180-220

M.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1964: ‘Miss Doris Dance Jones. For public services in Zanzibar.’

Doris Dance Jones was born in 1903 and trained at King’s College Hospital, London, from 1924 to 1927. She was called up to the Territorial Army Nursing Service in February 1941, and taken on the strength of No. 33 General Hospital at Peebles. In August 1942, she embarked for the Middle East and disembarked to PAIFORCE in Iraq on 6 September. She served at Bandar Abbas, Malta and Syracuse, before returning to the UK on compassionate grounds in September 1944.

After the war, Miss Jones went into the Colonial Service, and was in Zanzibar during the terrible uprisings of 1963. Zanzibar, and her sister island of Pemba, had been ruled since the 19th century by Omani sultans under a British Protectorate. During the extremely violent uprising, tens of thousands of people of Arab origin were murdered or expelled and the island gained its independence at the end of 1963. Miss Jones eventually returned to Devon where she became Nursing Superintendent of B.R.C.S. Detachment Devon 152. She received the Voluntary Medical Services Medal in 1965, and a bar to the medal in 1970. She died at Kenton, Devon, on 11 February 1976.