Auction Catalogue

17 September 2004

Starting at 11:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part I)

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

Lot

№ 1161

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17 September 2004

Hammer Price:
£350

A well-documented and interesting Second World War group of five awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel G. S. Jackson, Royal Berkshire Regiment, who served as a G.S.O. 2 (Intelligence) in 8 Corps 1942-44 and as a press spokesman for Montgomery in 21 Army Group 1944-45

1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals; Efficiency Decoration, G.VI.R.,
Territorial, with Bar, both officially dated on the reverse ‘1950’, good very fine and better (5) £350-400

Graham Stewart “Jacko” Jackson, who was born in April 1914 and educated at Merchant Taylors, was a pre-war Territorial Army officer in the Royal Berkshire Regiment, having been gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in January 1934.

Having been allocated to the training of Defence and Employment Platoons early on in the War - his accompanying reports make a scathing attack on the overall efficiency of such units - Jackson was posted to Staff College to attend the ‘No. 7 War Staff Course’. He had, in the interim, in 1941, acted as a Brigade Major in 177 Infantry Brigade. But it was in his subsequent postings as a G.S.O. 2 (Intelligence) in 8 Corps 1942-44, and as a press spokesman for Montgomery in 21 Army Group 1944-45, that he became closely involved in some of the major operations and decisions of the War.

On leaving Montgomery’s staff in May 1945, Jackson was appointed Head of Public relations for the British Army on the Rhine, and, in May 1952, returned to civilian life with a post in the historical section of the Cabinet Office. He was, however, recalled to active duty in June 1951, when he became the British Press Officer for S.H.A.P.E. in Paris, at which point Eisenhower was Supreme Commander and Montgomery his Deputy. Two years later he was elevated to Chief Press Officer, in which capacity he served until 1956. In the following year he returned to civilian employment with an appointment at the B.B.C., and served variously as the Corporation’s N.A.T.O. adviser and in the Features Department.

Sold with a large and fascinating quantity of original documentation, comprising a file of military and personal correspondence dating from the war years through to the late 1950s, ranging from a copy of a ‘Top Secret and Personal’ message between Generals Sir Percy Hobart and Sir Richard O’Connor, dated 24 July 1944 to a letter from Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett, dated 19 August 1957, enclosing a proposal, via Liddell Hart, for a ‘permanent United Nations force’, and much besides, including a series of letters between Jackson and Chester Wilmot, the famous wartime reporter, circa 1953, several of these being carbon copies, two letters from Liddell Hart regarding a television programme, dated 9 April 1958 and 2 May 1958, and others from his old wartime boss, General Sir Richard O’Connor and another Corps Commander, General Sir Brian Horrocks; together with a separate file containing a large quantity of military reports from 1944, etc., among them information pertinent to “Operation Overlord” (stamped “Most Secret”, and dated 31 March 1944), “Operation Epsom” 26-30 June, “Operation Jupiter” 10 July and a printed map for “Operation Totalize” 7-8 August.