Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Post War ‘Singapore’ M.B.E. group of seven awarded to Warrant Officer R. R. Calvert, Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers

The Most Excellent Order of The British Empire, M.B.E., Military, type 2; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf; General Service 1918-62, G.VI.R., 2 clasps, Malaya, Cyprus (22237051 S.Sgt., R.E.M.E.); General Service 1962, 1 clasp, Malay Peninsula (22237 051 W.O.Cl.1., R.E.M.E.); together with an erased Efficiency Medal, Territorial, G.VI.R., all but the G.S.M. 1962 polished, therefore nearly very fine or better, otherwise good very fine (8) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Richard Schweder Collection of Medals for Campaigns in Malaysia.

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M.B.E. London Gazette 11 June 1966. The original recommendation states: ‘Warrant Officer I (Artificer Sergeant Major) Calvert has been the Warrant Officer in charge of 25 and 61 Squadrons Royal Corps of Transport Combined Light Aid Detachment for a period of two years which has been a period of intense transport activity in Singapore due to Indonesian confrontation against Malaysia. That 32 Regiment has been able to maintain a very high, and at peak operating periods 100% vehicle availability has been entirely due to the exceptional devotion, leadership and skill of this Warrant Officer.

The pride he takes in the rapid turn round of vehicles from this very busy Light Aid Detachment is positively intense and but for his efforts we would have been short of vehicles for operational tasks, which is unacceptable, and the civil hiring bill would have increased alarmingly.

I January 1965, with the return to Singapore of some thirty 3 ton vehicles from Labuan where they had been extremely heavily employed for the past eighteen months, there existed the unacceptable risk of wholesale replacement which would have seriously jeopardised theatre stocks. Warrant Officer I Calvert, by his tremendous drive, leadership, skill and organisation, returned all but five of these vehicles to theirs troops in a taskworthy condition within ten days. This would normally have been quite outside the scope of a Light Aid Detachment. But due to Warrant Officer I Calvert’s tremendous effort it was accomplished without outside assistance.

Throughout 1965 he has maintained the same exemplary standards culminating in some two-hundred vehicles, which have covered three and a half million miles this year, being found 100% taskworthy by Annual Inspection.’