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Auction: 18002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 440

Four: Private R. C. Andrews, 1st Parachute Regiment, Army Air Corps, who was taken P.O.W. at Arnhem in September 1944

1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; War Medal 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1945-48 (14523788 Pte. R. C. Andrews, A.A.C.), three digits of number officially corrected on the last, good very fine (4)


The recipient was taken P.O.W. at Arnhem on 25 September 1944.

On Sunday 17 September 1944, 1 PARA jumped onto Renkum Heath, west of Arnhem, with the 1st Airborne Division. During the advance to capture the high ground north of Arnhem, Lieutenant-Colonel D. Dobie, commanding the Battalion, was wounded and taken prisoner. Having sustained severe casualties in the area of Den Brink and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital trying to reach the 2nd Battalion cut-off at the Arnhem Bridge, 1 PARA was forced to retire to the Division perimeter that became besieged at Oosterbeek. Reduced to 100 officers and men they defended with Lonsdale Force, until withdrawing across the Rhine to Driel and then to Nijmegen with the survivors of the 1st Division.

After the war the Battalion was re-constituted in 1946, and affiliated to the Brigade of Guards and served with the 6th Airborne Division in Palestine; sold with copied casualty return entries, which state the recipient's initials as 'R. G.'


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Sold for
£650