Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Leading Aircraftman (Motorboat Crewman) J. J. C. Lee, Royal Canadian Air Force, late 18th Canadian Infantry

British War and Victory Medals (189718 A. Sjt., 18-Can. Inf.); Canadian Voluntary Service Medal 1939-45; War Medal 1939-45, silver, together with related badges (7), three of them 18th Canadian Infantry, and a somewhat dented silver cigarette case bearing the recipient’s monogram and the date ‘1917’, extremely fine (12) £80-100

John Joseph Lee, who was born in the county of Elgin, Ontario in August 1897, enlisted in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force in December 1915.

Posted to the 18th Canadian Infantry on his arrival in France in June 1917, he was wounded in the following August and, at length, evacuated to England. His medical reports refer to him as having been ‘struck by small pieces of H.E. shell in right shoulder - FBs have not been removed’, and, as a consequence of the failure to remove these ‘foreign bodies’, he suffered ‘pain at times from retained metal.’ In fact Lee was in no fit state to rejoin his unit in France until the War’s end, but promptly developed ‘trench fever’ and pneumonia, and was lucky to survive. He was finally discharged back in London, Ontario in April 1919.

In May 1941, Lee enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and was employed as a Motorboat Crewman until December of the same year, when he was discharged at the R.C.A.F. Station at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on compassionate grounds.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation and photographs, the former including two certificates for the recipient’s work as an instructor in the Great War, prior to going overseas.