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Auction: 24112 - Orders, Decorations and Medals - e-Auction
Lot: 516

The campaign group of four awarded to Lieutenant A. J. Jones, Royal Berkshire Regiment, who was wounded in the trenches and later taken prisoner-of-war in Bulgaria: he escaped from captivity but was later recaptured

British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. A. J. Jones); Defence and War Medals 1939-1945, toning and contact marks, overall very fine (4)

Alfred James Jones was born in 1897 in Swindon and there attested with the 2/4th Wiltshire Territorial Army in September 1914. He was posted to India shortly afterwards where he was promoted Acting Corporal and later Lance Sergeant before returning home in 1916 to be appointed his Commission.

In March 1917, Jones was gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Royal Berkshire Battalion. He arrived at the Western Front the following month and joined the 5th Berkshires, 35th Brigade, 12th Division at Gouy en Artois, France. They moved to the front-line trenches on the Monchy-Scarpe line a few days later, where Jones suffered a bayonet wound in his right thigh and many other members of the Regiment were wounded.

Jones was shipped back home at once where he remained recovering until he was well enough to join the B Company of the 2nd Cheshire Regiment in Macedonia that September. Jones was in the 6th Platoon of the B Company when his unit crossed the Kopriva Bridge on the Struma Front to occupy the villages of Kjupri and Kumli in April 1918. Jones and Sergeant Booth of his platoon rescued a seriously wounded comrade in Kjupri and carried him to a sunken road where Booth was killed by a sniper and Jones captured. Jones later gave a statement of the circumstances of his capture, in which he remarked, 'I owe my life to a kind Bulgar officer who frustrated the attempt by one of his soldiers to use the bayonet.'

Four months later in August 1918, Jones escaped the Phillippopolis Camp but was recaptured days later suffering from malaria. He was gazetted as a Lieutenant in September while still imprisoned before he was admitted the next month to a Casualty Clearing Station as a returned prisoner of war. Repatriated in December, Jones was demobilised in March 1919.

Jones joined the Royal Air Force upon the outbreak of the Second World War and was commissioned Acting Pilot Officer (Balloon) in the Auxiliary Air Force, General Duties Branch. He became Pilot Officer in September 1939 and later joined the Technical Branch (Engineers), becoming a Flying Officer that December. Jones was discharged after the end of the war in July 1946.

Sold together with a large quantity of comprehensive copied research as well as the recipient's mounted dress miniatures and silver identity bracelet.

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Sold for
£130

Starting price
£110