A rare Aden casualty’s General Service Medal awarded to Lance-Corporal T. Liddell, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers

General Service 1962, 1 clasp, South Arabia (23854110 L./Cpl. T. Liddell, R.N.F.), extremely fine £1200-1500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection.

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Thomas Liddell was born in July 1943 and originally enlisted in the 6th Battalion, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (Territorials) in February 1961. Transferring to the Regular Army later that year, he was posted to the 1st Battalion out in Germany, where he was advanced to substantive Lance-Corporal in July 1966, prior to being embarked for Aden that September.

And it was there, on 20 June 1967, that he was killed in action in the “Crater” when three Land Rovers were ambushed outside by mutinous policemen outside the Armed Police Barracks.
Several men of the Royal Corps of Transport had been gunned down earlier that day, and Liddell’s senior officer, Major Moncour, was responding to gunfire in the direction of the barracks - in fact a desperate engagement between a party of Fusiliers under 2nd Lieutenant Davies, whose Saracen armoured vehicle had come under fire. Moncour set-off with three Land Rovers, Liddell travelling in the third as the driver and as they approached the barracks they came under withering fire and were stopped dead in their tracks, all but Fusilier Storey being killed, ‘some most brutally by being burnt alive or, in one case, being dragged to death along the road tied to the back of a vehicle.’

Two weeks later, Colonel “Mad Mitch” Mitchell of the Argylls & Sutherland Highlanders famously re-entered the “Crater”.

Liddell was buried in the European Cemetery at Malla in Aden, and the lot is accompanied by a quantity of memorabilia stemming from a remembrance service held there in 1996, including a photograph of his grave.