Auction Catalogue

22 September 2006

Starting at 11:30 AM

.

Orders, Decorations and Medals

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

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Lot

№ 43

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22 September 2006

Hammer Price:
£3,600

The civil M.B.E., Second World War Coastal Forces clandestine operations D.S.C. group of seven awarded to Lieutenant A. Holme-Russell, Royal Indian Navy Volunteer Reserve, who commanded M.Ls charged with inserting special forces behind Japanese lines in Burma

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
, M.B.E. (Civil) Member’s 2nd type breast badge; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated ‘1944’ and privately engraved, ‘Lieutenant Allan Holme-Russell, R.I.N.V.R.’; 1939-45 Star; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf; Uganda Independence Medal 1962, mounted court-style as worn, together with a set of related miniature dress medals and the recipient’s identity discs (2), good very fine or better (16) £3500-4000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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Collection

M.B.E. London Gazette 13 June 1957.

D.S.C.
London Gazette 1 August 1944:

‘For courage, enterprise and leadership in Light Coastal Forces of the Royal Indian Navy in hazardous operations.’

The original recommendation states:

‘For services in operations “Blast” and “Bandola”. These operations consisted of a 1200 mile round trip, eighty percent of which was in enemy waters close to enemy shores. During these operations, two clandestine missions were successfully accomplished, an Akyab-type sloop was sunk, an air attack fought off without loss and prisoners brought back to base. Lieutenant Holme-Russell conducted his part in the operations with skill and disregard for danger in command of M.L.
477. He had previously conducted similar operations with equal skill and efficiency.’

Mention in despatches
London Gazette 2 May 1944.

Allan Holme-Russell was educated at Lymm Grammar School and enlisted in the “Wavy Navy” in September 1940, and served briefly as a rating in H.M. Ships Mansfield and Adventure prior to attending the officers’ training establishment King Alfred at Hove. Commissioned as a Temporary Sub. Lieutenant in April 1941, he transferred to the Royal Indian Navy Volunteer Reserve in the following month and was attached to the Morvi in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea from September 1941 to February 1942. Next appointed to Coastal Forces, he served operationally in M.Ls of the 55th Fairmile Flotilla from August 1943 to June 1945, which period witnessed him winning his D.S.C. for gallantry on clandestine missions off Burma, in addition to a mention in despatches.

Having completed his first “cloak and dagger” mission in M.L.
477 in October 1943, Holme-Russell participated in “Operation Crash” in the following month, this time embarking ‘three Burma O.Rs and two civilians’ from “Sandy Point” - one of his more regular customers over the coming months was ‘Major Fergusson of the Inter Service Liaison Department’. Next up were operations “Blast” and “Bandola”, in January 1944, the official report for which states that Holme-Russell’s M.L. carried a party of agents to be introduced into the coastal area south of Calventuras, in addition to picking up another party of agents who had been dropped off in the previous month. At the same time, too, he was responsible for relaying all W./T. transmissions on behalf of the force involved, which also included two H.D.M.Ls. The same report states that M.L. 477 carried out her mission successfully, although the party she landed on the first night ‘returned because there were too many Japs in the area ... These are probably the longest operational trips into enemy waters, close to enemy shores, ever carried out by Coastal Forces anywhere and were unquestionably hazardous in the extreme. They were a success and were executed with the greatest skill and efficiency by all concerned.’

About this time, too, frequent operations were carried out around Ramree Island, M.L.
477 actually penetrating the harbour area for 16 miles to a point off Ramtree Town - several boats supplying the Japanese with vegetables and other supplies were sunk (one small Burmese craft had Rs. 700 in Japanese and British currency, thus proving that they were supplying the Japanese). M.Ls could ram these boats and cut them in two without damage to the M.L. but the Burmese were always taken prisoner and handed over to the Army for interrogation, sometimes providing information of great value.

Yet even after Holme-Russell had completed his time on clandestine operations, patrol work in support of the advancing Army was equally fraught with danger, a case in point being the following encounter off the Arakan coast in early 1945:

‘We had always been conscious of our vulnerability in confined waters when under way by day. We could be heard and seen and were a clearly defined target to any gun ashore. We were on patrol just before returning to base one day when the ever-expected happened. The first six rounds came over and we hadn’t a clue from where. Life was unpleasant. One came through the bridge and another through the funnel. Guns were all bearing when the next “bricks” arrived, but still we could not see anything. By this time the fuel lines to one engine were severed and our manoeuvrability was considerably decreased. It was not until we were within four hundred yards that the tell-tale movement of leaves and slight dust gave us our target. Another anti-tank crew soon learned that it would have been “most expedient, wise and best” to concentrate on tanks, but by then it was too late. Another of our boats came up full-throttle, washing the banks away, and joined in the
coup de grace’ (recipient’s account in the Lymm Grammar School Magazine, 1946, refers).

After the War, Holme-Russell joined the administration in Uganda, initially as an Assistant District Commissioner at Kigezi, and he served in a similar capacity until his retirement in September 1964, work that resulted in him being awarded the M.B.E. He settled back home in Hampshire, where he died in October 1982.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including a superb array of wartime photographs, pasted-down and fully captioned on photograph album pages (approximately 100 images), the vast majority of them pertinent to his time off Burma and featuring M.Ls and fellow “Nip-Nippers” of the 55th Flotilla (and several undoubtedly taken while in active operations); together with an equally fascinating bound copy of
Five Navies Fight For Burma, a profusely illustrated wartime publication to which the recipient has added extensive annotation for operations involving his M.L. and 55th Flotilla; his Buckingham Palace M.B.E. investiture letter, dated 17 October 1957, together with a large quantity of related congratulatory letters (approximately 40); Government of Uganda forwarding slip for his Independence Medal 1962; his official retirement letter from the Office of the Prime Minster, Uganda, dated 28 September 1964, with a full career summary of his time in that country; a copy of the the history of the Arakan Coastal Forces, From Trombay to Changi, in which his exploits are frequently mentioned; a run of Journals of the Royal Indian Navy Association and a wooden R.I.N. shield / wall plaque.