Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

the original R.A.F. training transfer card appertaining to 2nd Lieutenant L. Reader, who was wounded and shot down in a combat in November 1918, with assorted signatures of his instructors and C.Os in the period April to July 1918, among them Wing Commander (afterwards Marshal of the Royal Air Force, the 1st Viscount) Portal, Captain Roydon Dash, D.F.C., and Lieutenant A. Binnie, M.C., together with his Air Board Technical Notes, inscribed in ink, ‘Cadet L. Reader, Wantage Hall Camp, Reading’, generally in good condition (Lot) £50-100

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, An Old Collection of Medals Relating to The Great War.

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Leslie Reader was born in January 1900 and entered the Royal Air Force early 1918, direct from employment as a pay clerk at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.

Appointed a Flight Cadet, his C.Os and instructors included such luminaries as the future C.-in-C. of Bomber Command, Marshal of the Royal Air Force the 1st Viscount Portal, K.G., G.C.B., O.M., D.S.O., M.C., Captain Roydon Dash, D.F.C., an ex-No. 8 Squadron pilot who would later be knighted, and a gallant Australian, Lieutenant Alan Binnie, M.C., a one-armed pilot thanks to an earlier encounter with the Red Baron’s brother, Lothar von Richthofen - he saw further action as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the A.I.F. in the 1939-45 War, on one occasion taking up an unarmed Dragon Rapide over New Guinea, from which he dropped hand grenades. He died following an air crash in March 1945, some say having survived the impact but been executed by the Japanese.

For his own part, young Reader was posted to No. 10 Squadron out in France in September 1918, where he was quickly in action - thus a combat with seven Fokker DVIIs on the 20th, in which his A.W. FK8 was damaged. Again under fire on 31 October, when his Observer was wounded, he made a crash-landing back at base, while two days later, in a Sopwith Dolphin of No. 19 Squadron, he was wounded and shot down. Reader was placed on the Unemployed List in early 1919.