Auction Catalogue

25 & 26 March 2014

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Washington Mayfair Hotel  London  W1J 5HE

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Lot

№ 1197

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26 March 2014

Hammer Price:
£2,600

A rare Second World War Somaliland 1940 operations M.M. group of five awarded to Sergeant D. Hunt, Northern Rhodesia Regiment, who was decorated for his gallant deeds in the famous actions at Hargeisa and Tug Argan

Military Medal, G.VI.R. (40025 Sjt. D. Hunt, N. Rhod. R.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Burma Star; War Medal 1939-45, minor official correction to regiment on the first, contact marks, generally good very fine (5) £1800-2200

Only seven M.Ms were awarded to the Northern Rhodesia Regiment in the Second World War, of which Hunt’s is the earliest award and unique in respect of being for operations in East Africa and to a white member of the Regiment.

M.M.
London Gazette 29 November 1940. The recommendation states:

‘For continuously meritorious service and fine leadership throughout the battles of Hargeisa and Tug Argan. At Hargeisa on 5 August 1940, Sergeant Hunt’s party, after a stout defence, was surrounded by the enemy. This N.C.O. collected his own party and another platoon and after dark piloted them to the Company R.V., a distance of 30 miles through the enemy lines. Sergeant Hunt’s leadership and devotion to duty were also very marked during the Tug Argan battle when he consistently set a high example, persistently volunteering for work of a difficult and dangerous kind.’

In his history of the Springboks in Somalia and Abyssinia 1940-41,
The War of a Hundred Days, James Ambrose Brown quotes a Rhodesian Officer’s description of the opening hours of the battle of Tug Argan:

‘The road from Hargeisa to Berbera ran through the gap. It was the only way they could come. We Rhodesians, with four guns of the East African Light Artillery, were holding four positions astride the gap. My company was on Knobbly Hill. They came at us in open order ... about 2,000 of them. Our gunfire drove them back in disorder. We saw an Italian officer in black jacket, white riding breeches and black top boots on a white charger, trying to reform them. A shell burst wiped him and his staff clear away.’

James Ambrose Brown continues:

‘From the prospective of this regiment that was how the battle of Tug Argan began on 11 August 1940. The 1st Northern Rhodesia Regiment, outnumbered by 12 to 1, fought off attacks day and night for five days. The Italians’ orders were to break through the range of rocky hills that blocked the way to the port of Berbera. In all British Somaliland there were some 6,000 men, four light howitzers and two anti-tank guns. Orders to reinforce the territory had come too late. Five battalions of Imperial soldiers awaited the onslaught of six Italian colonial brigades, three Blackshirt battalions, three groups of bande, 25 light and medium tanks, some twenty guns and fifty aircraft in support. Day after day, the defenders threw them back. The humiliated Mussolini yelped to the Duke of Aosta in Addis Ababa: “Pour all available reserves into Somaliland ... order the entire Imperial air force to co-operate.” The guns on Knobbly Hill fired a thousand rounds in the final 18 hours before the Rhodesians and Somali troopers fell back to their last trenches and the retreat to the coast.’

Sergeant Hunt, who was born in October 1911, is believed to have served as a Labour Officer in the Northern Rhodesia Government after the War.