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

№ 94

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22 September 2006

Hammer Price:
£2,000

The Second World War Legion of Honour, Medaille Militaire, Croix de Guerre and King’s Medal for Courage group of fifteen awarded to Ernest Bechet, a gallant member of the French Resistance: code-named “Rebelle”, he was captured while employed as a Lieutenant of the “Marco Polo” network and endured torture at the hands of the Gestapo prior to being interned in Buchenwald concentration camp

Legion of Honour,
4th Republic, 4th class breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, rosette on riband; Medaille Militaire, 4th Republic, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; Croix de Guerre 1939-1940, with 4 bronze palms on riband; Voluntary Combatant's Cross; Resistance Voluntary Combatant's Cross; Resistance Medal; War Commemorative Medal 1939-45, 2 clasps, Liberation, France; Medal for those Deported for Resistance Activities, 1 clasp, Deporte; Medal for Voluntary Service in the Free French Forces; Medal for Escaped Prisoners of War; Medal for Veterans of the Rhine 1924; Combatant's Cross; Medal of Honour, Ministry of Work and Social Security, 1st Class, gilt base metal, the reverse officially inscribed, ‘E. Bechet, 1962’, rosette on riband; French Orphanages Medal, 1st Class, bronze-gilt, the reverse offically inscribed, ‘E. Bechet, 1964’, rosette on riband; Great Britain, King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom, unnamed as issued, in its Royal Mint case of issue, together with a related set of dress miniatures (but without the French Orphanages Medal), very much as worn 'continental style' from a double strand silver-gilt chain complete with fitments, chipped reverse enamel band on the second, one or two edge bruises, otherwise generally good very fine

Together with the following related commemorative (and presentation) medallions or plaques:

30th Anniversary of the Return of Deportees 1945-75 (as issued by the U.N.A.D.I.F. (National Union of Deportees), F.N.D.I.R. (National Federation of Deported and Interned Members of the Resistance) and the A.N.F.R.O.M.F., silvered-bronze, the reverse officially inscribed, ‘E. Bechet, Mle. 77.005, Buchenwald’; an identical pair of bronze medallions ‘de la Resistance a la Deportation’ (issued by the same authorities), the reverse of one of them officially inscribed, ‘Kathleen Bechet, nee Dent, Internee Britanique, N. 2.3.0.1.20240, Besancon-Vittel’; 35th Anniversary of Liberation 1980 (as issued by the Comite National Du Memorial Deportation Natzwiller Struthof), bronze medallion, unnamed; Golden Jubilee of Paramount Pictures 1953, bronze commemorative, obverse, bust of the founder, Adolph Zukor, reverse engraved, ‘General Manager of Paramount Corporation to Bechet, Ernest, Technical Manager of the Paramount European, 1925-1965, Paris’; Musee de la legion D’Honneur, silvered-bronze plaque, the reverse engraved with a presentation inscription to ‘Monsieur Andre Ullmann’ on the occasion of his nomination to the Legion of Honour, 27 February 1935, one of the eight friends listed being ‘E. Bechet’; and other associated memorabilia, including an F.F.I. armband, bearing an official stamp and black Cross of Lorraine (Lot) £2000-2500

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

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Collection

Ernest Bechet was born at Lyons in January 1903 and worked for the Paramount pIctures in Paris before the 1939-45 War.

Taken prisoner of war at the fall of France, he was deported to Germany but escaped in October 1942 and became an early member of the French Resistance movement. From October 1943 he served as a Sous-Lieutenant - code name “Rebelle” - in the “Marco Polo” network in central Paris and, on capture by the Gestapo in June 1944, ‘he did not reveal any of his network’s secrets’, and was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp (Commission Nationale de la Medaille de la Resistance and French M.O.D. archives refer).

Repatriated in May 1945, Bechet returned to his pre-war employment at Paramount Pictures in Paris, where he was Chief Projectionist at the Paramount Opera Theatre from 1945-47, an Assistant to the Technical Manager 1948-54 and, finally, himself Technical Manager 1955-61; sold with verification for one or two of his awards, but well worthy of further research.