Pair: Corporal A. Paterson, Parachute Regiment

General Service 1962, 1 clasp, Northern Ireland (24372971 Pte., Para.); South Atlantic 1982, with rosette (24372971 Cpl., Para.), together with his identity discs and two A.S.U. sporting prize medals, good very fine and better (6) £1800-2200

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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Alexander Paterson was born in April 1959 and enlisted in the Parachute Regiment in Glasgow in July 1975. Two tours of duty followed in Northern Ireland in 1978 and 1980, so, too, action in the Falklands with the 3rd Battalion - according to an accompanying handwritten note, Paterson served in Sergeant Ian McKay’s 4 Platoon, ‘B’ Company.

In common with the remainder of 3 Para., he would have landed at San Carlos on 21 May 1982, participated in two night marches covering a distance of 40 miles, and then gone into action on Mount Longdon on the 11-12 June, when the Battalion lost 20 men killed and another 40 wounded. McKay, of course, won a posthumous V.C. on the same occasion.

Paterson was discharged from the 3rd Battalion at Aldershot in January 1985.

Sold with the recipient’s original Regular Army Certificate of Service; two portrait photographs, one taken on patrol in Northern Ireland and the other in the Falklands; embroidered Corporal’s stripes; and 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment swimming team and No. 1 Parachute Training School, R.A.F. patches.