A Good Series of Awards to Members of the S.A.S.

A superb Malaya operations M.M. group of three awarded to Regimental Sergeant-Major G. R. “Bob” Turnbull, Special Air Service Regiment, late Royal Artillery, who could use a repeater-shotgun so efficiently that it would quickly ‘fill a man with holes like a Gruyere cheese’, and who, among other victims, took out the communist gunslinger Ah Tuck in a ‘blink-of-the-eye’ jungle contact at 20 yards: his was the first M.M. to be awarded to the S.A.S. post-war

Military Medal, E.II.R., 1st issue (19046749 A./Sgt. G. R. Turnbull, R.A.); General Service 1918-62, E.II.R., 1 clasp, Malaya (19046749 Cpl. G. R. Turnbull, M.M., S.A.S.); General Service 1962, 2 clasps, Borneo, South Arabia (19046749 W.O. Cl. 2 G. R. Turnbull, M.M., S.A.S.) the second with minor official correction, generally good very fine (3) £12000-15000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Good Series of Awards to Members of the S.A.S..

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See colour illustration on front cover.

M.M. London Gazette 28 May 1957. The recommendation states:

‘On 3 September 1956, Sergeant Turnbull was leading a patrol of three Special Air Service troopers and one Private of the Sarawak Rangers on a four day patrol in the deep jungle of the Perak-Kelantan border area. At about noon he found tracks of five Communist terrorists and followed them until they were lost in streams. Sergeant Turnbull decided to back track to where he anticipated he would find a camp or a resting place. Sergeant Turnbull and his Iban tracker followed the tracks back for two days. At about 1400 hours on 5 September 1956, fresh cutting indicated that an enemy camp was near. By good fieldcraft the patrol located the position of an enemy sentry and heard talking which indicated the approximate position of the camp.

Sergeant Turnbull decided to wait for darkness or rain to cover his final approach to the camp. At 1615 hours rain fell and the enemy sentry withdrew. He took immediate advantage of this and personally led his patrol to the edge of the camp risking the chance that a second sentry might be hidden and in position to shoot. Having positioned two men as stops he attacked the camp, part of which he could now see, with one Special Air Service trooper and his Iban tracker. By surprise and quick accurate shooting Sergeant Turnbull and his two men succeeded in killing four Communist terrorists who occupied the camp. A quantity of arms and equipment including wireless documents were captured.

Sergeant Turnbull is an outstanding jungle leader who for nearly four years has shown the greatest determination and skill in the war against the Communist terrorists in Malaya, regardless at all times of risk to himself. His personal example has done much to inspire all soldiers in his Troop and Squadron to strive to reach the same standard.’

No better summary of the remarkable jungle skills of Turnbull can be found than that published in Tony Geraghty’s Who Dares Wins, The Special Air Service, 1950 to the Gulf War:

‘The soldier who personified these skills at the time was Sergeant Bob Turnbull, a gunner from Middlesborough, who combined a quick intelligence and good ear for foreign languages with the grinding determination of a human bulldozer. Turnbull befriended an Iban tracker called Anak Kayan, and achieved an eye for spoor as accurate as Kayan’s own, reading the splayed toe-prints of the aborigine for what they were: the terrorist footprint, which invariably revealed cramped toes that had once known shoes; and spotting a fine human footprint imposed by the more canny walker on an elephant footmark in an attempt to blur the trace.

Turnbull once followed the tracks of four men for five days until he spotted the hut they were occupying. He then waited for an impending rainstorm to arrive, correctly guessing that the sentries would then take shelter, and drew to within five yards of the hut before killing the four guerillas sheltering there. On one occasion, he pursued a notorious guerrilla leader called Ah Tuck, a man who always went armed with a Sten carbine, ready cocked. When the two men finally encountered one another in the bush at a range of twenty yards, Ah Tuck died holding his unfired weapon.

According to one officer who served with him, Turnbull used a repeater shotgun with such speed and accuracy that it would ‘fill a man with holes like a Gruyere cheese’ (The shotgun, its use perfected by the S.A.S. for close-quarter battle, has ever since been the subject of intensive study by U.S. as well as British forces). One officer who went on his first jungle patrol with Turnbull was unwise enough to insist that the sergeant act as back-marker to an Iban tracker and the officer himself. When the trio encountered a guerrilla, Turnbull instantly fired over the officer’s shoulder and had disabled the terrorist while the officer concerned was still reminding himself of the drill for such situations, ‘First, safety catch off ...’ ’

In the action in which Turnbull dispatched the terrorist gunslinger Ah Tuck, an incident that sealed his reputation for being a natural marksman with ‘the speed and agility of a cat’, an eyewitness noted that Turnbull fired with such speed that ‘the first three shots made an almost continuous bang’ and that by the time the echoes had died away he was already standing over the terrorist. All in all seven bullets had found their mark, ‘one in the head, one in his throat, three in his chest and two in his stomach.’

Following his highly successful career of 20 years with 22 S.A.S., which included subsequent tours in Borneo and South Arabia, Turnbull took up employment at the Palace of Westminster in 1974, where ‘His duties began in the Members Lobby and progressed through care of the public galleries to a senior post at the Bar of the House in 1988.’ The Sergeant-Major, a legend within the clandestine world of the S.A.S., died in February 1989.

Sold with a limited edition print (350/850) of David Shepherd’s picture Patrol Action in Malaya, which depicts Turnbull’s M.M.-winning exploits against four terrorists in their camp in September 1956, with related certificate; and a quantity of photocopied research which touches upon the many references to Turnbull in S.A.S. histories and articles.