Orders, Decorations and Medals

Seven: Chief Joiner R. T. Curtis, Royal Navy

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star, clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Burma Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45, these unnamed; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., E.II.R., 1st issue (MX58984 Ch. Jnr., H.M.S. Pembroke) very fine (7) £220-260

Robert 'Bob' Curtis a native of Queensborough on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, enlisted into the Royal Navy as a 'Joiner' on 3 February 1939. During the Second World War he served aboard the minesweeper H.M.S. Selkirk, 19 July 1939 - 21 June 1941, engaged in sweeping in the North Sea & Dover Straits. He then served in the assault ship H.M.S. Keren, seeing service off Madagascar, Algiers, Sicily and East Bengal.

With recipient’s Soldier’s Bible - with the four front pages listing his Naval service, ports visited, ships served etc., during the period 1939-54. Also with the recipient’s note book diary - with 80 pages of detailed entries relating to his service aboard the infantry assault ship H.M.S. Keren during 1942 - including entries for the invasion of Madagascar. The book is signed ‘Bob Curtis’ and the inside cover is dedicated ‘To my darling wife, 35 High St., Queenborough, Kent, England’.

The diary/notebook records many incidents aboard ship, including accidental deaths; suicide by an Officer (Lieutenant Welchman); insanity (a K.A.R. Askari chewed through his straight jacket and trashed the cell en route to Bombay), rumblings of 'Mutiny'; gruesome eye-witness accounts of visit to the battlefields on Madagascar and finding a stowaway of 1st Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment on the vessel at Bombay after the soldier had gone A.W.O.L. from his regiment at New Delhi. A fascinating record of events.