Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An interesting and well documented Second World War group of four awarded to Warrant Officer W. R. H. Yexley, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, a long-served Parachute Jumping Instructor who saw active service on the Burma front in 1943-45, gaining a “mention” and a King’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air - so, too, from his Gurkha pupils, the honorary title “Bahadar Thapa” - “The White Gurkha”

1939-45 Star; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf, together with additional oak leaf representative of the recipient’s King’s Commendation for Valuable Services in the Air, extremely fine (5) £300-350

Yexley, who enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in May 1941, volunteered for the Parachute Jump Instructor’s Course in December of the same year and was posted to No. 1 Parachute Jump School at Ringway in March 1942, where he instructed French and Polish servicemen, some of them, no doubt, members of S.O.E.

In the summer of 1942, he volunteered for a posting to the Far East, where he instructed Indian and Gurkha troops at Delhi and Rawalpindi, latterly as Battalion Instructor to 153/154 Gurkha Paratroop Regiments, work that gained him the honorary title of “Bahadur Thapa” - “The White Gurkha” from his admiring Nepalese pupils - his accompanying Flying Log Book credits him with 125 descents before the War’s end.

Moreover, a copy C.V. confirms his appointment as a Warrant Officer to Special Air Services for operations over Burma, Malaya and Indo-China, in which capacity he completed 31 “special duties” sorties, more often than not in support of Chindit, S.O.E. 136 Force and O.S.S. operations - thus on occasion acting as Jump Master for assorted agents. He was awarded the King’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air in January 1944 and a “mention” in June of the same year. Yexley returned to the U.K. in September 1945 and was demobbed in June 1946.

Sold with a large quantity of original documentation and photographs, including his Air Forces of India Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book, with a few privately entered entries relevant to his time at Ringway, and thence covering the period May 1942 to August 1945; a subsequent R.A.F. Flying Log Book with a few entries for Ringway and Northolt in January-February 1946; his pocket diary for 1945; wartime photograph albums (2), one with approximately 80 images and the other 65 images, the vast majority of them taken in India, together with a further quantity of loose photographs (approximately 80 images), these too taken during his time in India; a “Baptism of the Equator” certificate issued aboard ‘An H.M. Transport’ on 17 August 1942; assorted newspaper cuttings; together with his cloth and bullion embroidered Parachutist’s Brevets, metalled Parachute Training Instructor’s badge, and identity discs.