Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Sergeant H. Margowsky, South African Medical Corps, attached 2nd Botha Regiment, who was reported as having been killed in action at Sidi Rezegh in November 1941 but was later confirmed as a P.O.W.

1939-45 Star; Africa Star; War Medal 1939-45; Africa Service Medal 1939-45, these four officially inscribed, ‘45195 H. Margowsky’; Efficiency Medal, G.VI.R., 1st issue Union of South Africa (Sgt. H. Margowsky, S.A.M.C.), mounted as worn, good very fine and better (5) £180-220

Harry Margowsky was born at Kopjes in the Orange Free State in 1916 and was educated at Athlone High School. A Clerk by profession and a pre-war member of the South African Medical Corps (A.C.F.), he volunteered for the Union Defence Force in May 1940 and first saw action in Abyssinia in the following year.

Subsequently attached to the 2nd Botha Regiment, 5th S.A. Brigade, he was taken P.O.W. in the early stages of the desperate action at Sidi Rezegh on 23 November 1941 - thereafter, according to an accompanying newspaper cutting, ‘having a grandstand view of the rest of the battle from the back of a German truck, and the dubious pleasure of being shelled by South African Artillery and then bombed by his own aircraft.’ The same source continues:

‘He was taken to Benghazi and on 9 December was marched on board the S.S. Jason with about 2300 other P.O.Ws. The Jason never made it. The following day, when she was about 8 km. from the coast, she was torpedoed by a British submarine. Earlier, Mr. Margowsky and five friends had been moved from a hold and put into another. The torpedo exploded in the first hold and all the men there lost their lives. The Jason drifted to the Greek coast and stranded herself there. In Greece the surviving prisoners, some 1700, were held captive under shocking conditions. Two months later, he was among the men moved to a camp in Italy and two months later - his guardian angel working away as busily as ever - he was among a number of Allied soldiers who were exchanged for a group of Italians. He arrived in Cairo on 11 April 1942, opened a South African newspaper and discovered that he was “dead”. In the meantime his family and friends were mourning the passing of their warrior and had expressed their sorrow in advertisements. For a week after 11 January his relatives sat Shiva, the Jewish week of mourning for the dead, and at his office two of his colleagues hung up a black-edged tribute which they had written ... ’

Moreover, while on the train from Durban to Johannesburg on the final stages of his journey home, Margowsky could hardly contain his eagerness to get to his mother’s house. Equally, his family at large had made preparations to meet him at Johannesburg Station, but at the last minute his mother decided that the station experience would be too taxing and decided to wait at home for the return of her son. As the train neared Johannesburg, it stopped for a moment at a siding called Knights and, on the spur of the moment, Margowsky decided to jump from the train and take a taxi to his mother’s home ten miles away - thus they were re-united before the reception committee at the station.

Demobilised in July 1945, Margowsky was awarded his Efficiency Medal in November 1947; sold with the above quoted newspaper feature, together with copied service record and medal application forms.