The General Service Medal awarded to Warrant Officer P. D. ‘Gypsy’ Smith, Special Air Service Regiment, a noted explosives expert in the Borneo campaign who extended his talents to creating a still for making alcohol from the metal frame of his Bergen rucksack

General Service 1962-2007, 3 clasps, Borneo, Radfan, South Arabia, unofficial retaining rod between first and second clasps (22718514 Sgt. P. D. Smith. SAS.) light contact marks, good very fine £1,500-£1,800

Phillip D. ‘Gypsy’ Smith was born in June 1934 and was called up for National Service in September 1952, signing on for Regular Engagement in the following month. He subsequently served in Malaya, Oman and Borneo with the S.A.S., latterly as Squadron Sergeant-Major of ‘D’ Squadron. According to the author of his obituary published in Mars and Minerva:

‘[Smith was not] the scruffiest S.S.M. I ever knew, because he was always well dressed and with that dark, sleek hair swept back, he might even have been dapper. But Gypsy, deceptively big, was wonderfully casual and relaxed which might lead you to think he was scruffy. He ‘slouched’ in almost every situation I knew him and I thought this was a great asset! Whether putting out a demolitions ambush in the jungle (his speciality then) or greeting a senior officer, Gypsy could stroll into such a situation putting everyone at ease in a way no other man could imitate. Of course this irritated some senior officers but with his worldly-wise demeanour he also bemused them. They probably thought he was a strange S.A.S. General in disguise so would say nothing, but I’d catch them looking at him out of the corner of their eye, with a puzzled and worried look! Gypsy could do that to people ... his other speciality, a demolitions ambush in Borneo, with its mix of Claymore mines and explosive devices all linked with white cordtex (the idiot British had not yet got round to manufacturing it in green), to all of which we had to painstakingly stick jungle moss, using tubes of commercial Gripfix under Gypsy’s eagle eye. He would then view it from all sides and lovingly launch into the best means of initiation - his favourite was an inviting branch, half-way up a slippery jungle slope, which some person in the enemy patrol was bound to grab.’

Smith is extensively mentioned in S.A.S., The Jungle Frontier, 22 Special Air Service Regiment in the Borneo Campaign 1963-66, by Peter Dickens, in addition to other published S.A.S. histories; Tony Geraghty’s Who Dares Wins credits him with setting up a hydro-electric generator at Sabah, the only means of ‘electric light in thousands of square miles’ (as well as his still for making alcohol).

Note: The recipient’s General Service Medal 1918-62, with clasps for Malaya and Arabian Peninsula, sold in these rooms in December 2003.