The Collection of Medals Formed by Bill and Angela Strong

An interesting campaign group of four awarded to Major R. C. B. Crosse-Kelly, Head of the Clan O’Kelly, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, late Border Regiment and onetime Military Intelligence

Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1945-48 (Major The O’Kelly, Innisks.); General Service 1962, 2 clasps, South Arabia, Radfan (Maj. R. C. B. Crosse-Kelly, Innisks.), this last an official later issue, in its card box of issue, the first three mounted as worn, generally good very fine (4) £400-500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection.

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Richard Charles Bedingfeld Crosse-Kelly, afterwards The O’Kelly, was born in Golders Green, London in January 1916 and was educated at the Imperial Services College. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Border Regiment in August 1936, he transferred to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in July 1937, and was serving out in India by the renewal of hostilities, where he attended a Chemical Warfare Course at the end of 1939.

Returning to the U.K. in March 1940, he remained employed in this country until the War’s end, latterly as a Liaison Officer attached to S.H.A.E.F., following which he was posted to Palestine for staff duties, where he witnessed the bombing of British H.Q. at King David Hotel in in July 1946, when 90 people were killed. Having then served as a D.A.A.G. in Greece from December 1946 until October 1947, he returned to the Home Establishment and was advanced to substantive Major in August 1949.

O’Kelly next attended the Advanced Intelligence Course at the Joint Intelligence Bureau (J.I.B.) in London, and qualified as an interpreter in Serbo-Croat, before being posted to Austria in the early 1950s, where, among other duties, he was asked to intercept McLean’s wife as she fled to Moscow after visiting her mother in Geneva - but she got off the train just before the Austrian border.

On retiring in 1959, he tried his hand at farming, but in 1963 returned to full time employment with the Ministry of Defence and was appointed Administrative Commandant of the Arabic Language School in Aden in 1963 - hence the “late claim” made by his widow for his General Service Medal for “South Arabia” and “Radfan” in January 2007.

The Major, who was described in one of his J.I.B. assessments as ‘the type of officer who would be followed by men through thick and thin’, died in October 1978; sold with a quantity of original documentation and photographs, including the recipient’s commission warrant for 2nd Lieutenant in the Border Regiment, dated 28 August 1936, and a typed memoir written by his wife, with chapters dealing with some of his military postings.