2581308 Serjeant Herbert John BELL, MM, Royal Corps of Signals

Morning all - in some correspondence with the OP, she mentioned another bloke that was with Herbert Bell in Albania by the name of Archibald Huxtable ("Jock").

I am digging around down under for some info on him, but then I thought that if Herbert was awarded with a MM then maybe Jock got something too. The following would indicate that he certainly did:


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Viewing Page 1427 of Issue 36983



Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday, the 13th of March, 1945



CENTRAL CHANCERY OF THE ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD


St. James's Palace, S.W.I


15th March, 1945.


The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the British Empire Medal (Military Division), in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the field, to the undermentioned:


No. 1882306 Sergeant (acting) Basil Bourne-Newton, Corps of Royal Engineers
No. 13300005 Sergeant Harry James Oswald Coltman, Pioneer Corps
No. 2327813 Sergeant Archibald Huxtable, Royal Corps of Signals


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Due to the seniority of the award the citation must be available somewhere. How do I go about accessing it?

What I know about finding British awards / medals / decorations could be written on the back of a postage stamp, so any assistance would be appreciated.

cheers


Dave

 

I've tried various searches ie last name, first name, signals, BEM etc on the National Archives downloadable citations but couldn't find him. He is listed on a medal awards database I obtained from the RCS Museum.

For whats its worth I couldn't find the other two either.

 

Pooh!


I was assuming that a BEM would be relatively easy to track down.

Thanks for looking

 

Following on from this request, I have been looking at details of a Wellington flight on the 29th of December that attempted to land in Albania.

The pilot was Flying Officer TUNSTALL, Samuel Sydney Moss DFC 414105 RAAF of Boonah, Queensland (known as "Moss" Tunstall). There are a couple of photos of him in the AWM collection - that refer to him being detained in Italy whilst sightseeing near the frontlines while on a few days leave. He wanted to see the places he had flown missions over.


I have procured the ORB for his SQN at the time of the mission but it doesn't go into much detail on the actual operation.


I am attaching a couple of references to his DFC, one is from the newspapers of the day and the other is a file card from the AWM. Would his actual DFC citation be available, or is what I have all that would be recorded??


Looking forward to any assistance again (or a lead to a book that might answer my question).

 

Cate, may I ask how your research progressed?