Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Eight: Corporal D. R. Bradshaw, Royal Marines

Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (PO/X. 2082 Mne., R.M.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals; Coronation 1937, these six privately engraved, ‘PO/X. 2082 D. R. Bradshaw, Cpl., R.M.’; Civil Defence L.S., E.II.R., generally good very fine (8) £250-300

Denis Reginald Bradshaw, who was born at Kettering, Northamptonshire in April 1919, enlisted in the Royal Marines in London in April 1936, and first went to sea in the battle cruiser H.M.S. Repulse, an appointment that lasted from June 1937 until January 1939, during which he qualified for his Naval General Service Medal for ‘Palestine 1936-1939’ and the Coronation 1937 Medal, the latter being confirmed on his service record.

Then in March 1939, following a brief stint of service aboard the cruiser Effingham, he joined the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, aboard which ship he served as a gunlayer in B.2 turret until coming ashore in October 1940. During that period the Ark Royal witnessed extensive action off Norway and in the Mediterranean, and survived at least one U-Boat attack. And it was the claim of a German bomber pilot to have sunk her with a bomb on 5 September 1939 that propelled her name into the headlines, when enemy radio continued to ask, “Where is the Ark Royal?” In point of fact she was fine, although Bradshaw later revealed in a letter that the bomb had missed his gun position ‘by a few feet’, before falling in the sea.

Posted to the Portsmouth Division when the Ark Royal returned to the U.K. for a short refit in October 1940, Bradshaw returned to sea in the battleship Queen Elizabeth in February 1941, and came ashore for a final time in December of the same year, having seen action in the Crete operations; whether he was also aboard her at Alexandria at the time of the famous Italian “Charioteer” attack on 20 December 1941 remains unclear, his service record recording that he was ‘on passage’, but it is not without interest that Bradshaw was discharged ‘as physically unfit for Royal Marine service’ in the rank of Corporal in May 1942 - the impressive explosion resulting from the Italians’ handiwork tore a 40 feet square hole under the battleship’s foremost boiler room.

Sold with a good quantity of original documentation and career photographs, the former including several ship postcards; Certificate of Service; R.M. Certificate of Discharge (dated at Eastney Barracks, 5 May 1942); Certificate of Qualification for the rank of Corporal (dated at Eastney Barracks, 7 February 1941); Admiralty letter confirming his entitlement to the Naval General Service Medal for ‘Palestine 1936-1939’ (dated 10 September 1943); a letter of reference from Rear-Admiral Sir Wellwood Maxwell, K.B.E., dated 6 December 1961 (‘I have known Denis Reginald Bradshaw for 24 years ...’); and Civil Defence Certificate for Warden Section Instructor (dated 13 July 1960).