A Collection of Medals to Members of the Special and Airborne Forces

Six: Corporal D. A. Read, Royal Corps of Signals, who served in the Raiding Support Regiment 1944-45

1939-45 Star; Africa Star, clasp, 8th Army; Italy Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf; together with his wartime embroidered parachute wings and related badges (4), among them a cast Badge of the Greek Sacred Legion, the whole contained in a glazed display frame, generally good very fine (11) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Members of the Special and Airborne Forces.

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Douglas Arnold Read was born in Alverstoke, Hampshire in April 1920 and enlisted in the Royal Corps of Signals at Newport, Isle of Wight, in October 1937, direct from brief service as a Private in the Queen’s Royal Regiment. As verified by accompanying documentation, he served in the B.E.F. from September 1939 until being evacuated in June 1940, and went out to the Middle East in June 1942, in which theatre of war he appears to have been actively employed until the end of hostilities.

Indeed it is clear from his original Soldier’s Service and Pay Book that he was a qualified parachutist and a member of “Raiding Forces”, most probably as a Wireless Operator - he completed No. 114 Parachute Course in April 1944, was awarded his ‘operational wings, left breast’ in February 1945, and was further entitled to wear the ‘Badge of the Greek Sacred Regiment’. The same source also confirms that he won a “mention” in June 1945.

Most probably, therefore, he joined the Raiding Support Regiment (R.S.R.) soon after it was established at the end of 1943, a call for parachute volunteers for ‘duties of a hazardous nature’ gaining around 3,000 applicants from 60 differents regiments and corps. Over the coming months, its members assisted a number of clandestine units in operations in Albania, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia - in Greece alone its men destroyed 17 bridges, blew up six roads, wrecked hundred of metres of railway line on 18 different occasions, shot up or derailed five trains, blew up five petrol / ammunition dumps, knocked out 150 vehicles, destroyed a dam and killed around 300 of the enemy.

Read’s entitlement to wear the Badge of the Greek Sacred Regiment, a sister unit, is not without interest, for the R.S.R’s “Foxforce” became embroiled in the Greek Civil War 1944-45, the British losing 250 troops in five weeks of bitter fighting against E.L.A.S. Discharged to the Army Reserve in the rank of Corporal in June 1946, he was serving as an Acting Warrant Officer in the 5th (Cadet) Battalion, Suffolk Regiment in the mid-1950s.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s Soldier’s Service and Pay Book, Regular Army Certificate of Service, a sketch book, a wartime field message form, with pencilled statement in a foreign language (‘If liable to be intercepted or to fall into enemy hands, this message must be sent in cipher ... ’), and a calendar booklet for 1941-42, which includes a list of officers Read was appointed to train in Morse and wireless operation, suggesting perhaps even earlier participation in clandestine operations.