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Auction: 25113 - Orders, Decorations and Medals - e-Auction
Lot: 490

The campaign group of five awarded to Honorary Captain C. Standen, Pioneer Corps, late Royal Artillery, who was commissioned after service in France 1940, becoming a well-known figure on his native Isle of Man where he was a fixture of the Hutchinson Internment Camp

1939-45 Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Efficiency Medal, Territorial, G.VI.R. (Lt C Standen P Corps), mounted as worn together with a Royal Artillery cap badge, good very fine overall (4)

T.E.M. London Gazette 25 October 1938.

Cyril Standen was a native of Douglas, Isle of Man and attested with the Royal Artillery on the outbreak of the Second World War, being posted to a 6-inch howitzer battery in France. A series of newspaper articles in the Isle of Man Times state that he had suffered a foot injury prior to entering the war in France however family stories state that he suffered a shrapnel wound.

Regardless of the reason he was invalided back to Britain, an article in the above newspaper states his experiences in an article entitled 'Douglas Soldier in Liverpool Hospital' which states:

'He has been in a field ambulance station, five hospitals, three Red Cross trains, a hospital ship, and, to use his own words. "Heaven knows how many ambulances".'

According to family legend it was during his convalescence that Standen was persuaded to apply for a commission by an officer he befriended. Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 25 August 1941 he was posted to serve at Hutchinson Internment Camp, unofficially named 'The artists' camp' for its high number of artistic and intellectual internees. This included the famous Amadeus String Quartet, three of whom were of Austrian extraction and were interned at Hutchinson having been driven from their homes by the Nazis.

A collection of 164 photographs of camp life is available online from the Tate archive, along with the papers of Klaus Hinrichsen, one of the internees. Another article in the Isle of Man Times written not long after Standen's commission reports an appeal he made for piano music for his men, suggesting he supported the artistic nature of the camp himself.

Sold together with copied research and a miniature group corresponding to the recipient's full-sized medals with the Territorial Efficiency Medal replaced with an Efficiency Decoration.

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Estimate

Starting price
£70