Sold by Order of a Direct Descendant

Family group:

A rare Helicopter pilot’s Malaya operations D.F.C. group of seven awarded to Flight Lieutenant T. Carbis, Royal Air Force
Distinguished Flying Cross, E.II.R., reverse officially dated ‘1957’, with its Royal Mint case of issue; 1939-45 Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 2 clasps, Malaya, Cyprus, E.II.R. (Flt. Lt. T. Carbis, R.A.F.), officially stamped ‘Replacement’; Coronation 1953; Royal Air Force L.S. & G.C., E.II.R. (Fg. Off. T. Carbis, R.A.F.), mounted as worn, together with the suspension and ‘Malaya’ clasp from the recipient’s original G.S.M. (from which the medal disc became detached and lost), generally very fine and better

A Great War campaign group of three awarded to Corporal T. Carbis, South Lancashire Regiment, who was seriously wounded at St. Eloi in May 1915
1914-15 Star (2170 Cpl. T. Carbis, S. Lan. R.); British War and Victory Medals (2170 Cpl. T. Carbis, S. Lan. R.), together with related Silver War Badge, the reverse officially numbered ‘179728’, together with portrait photograph taken while recovering from his wounds, good very fine or better

A Great War campaign medal pair awarded to Bombardier H. S. Pawson, Royal Artillery
British War and Victory Medals (2624 Bmbr. H. S. Pawson, R.A.), the last with bent suspension ring, nearly very fine (14) £3000-3500

D.F.C. London Gazette 10 December 1957:

‘In recognition of distinguished service in Malaya.’

Thomas Carbis was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in July 1919, the son of a Great War veteran (see below), and was educated at Bradford Grammar School.

Enlisting in the Royal Air Force as a Halton Apprentice in August 1935, he was serving as a Corporal (Fitter) with No. 78 Squadron at Dishforth on the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, but transferred to No. 53 Squadron, a Blenheim unit, out in France in January 1940, where, after taking heavy casualties, the Squadron was withdrawn from Crecy in mid-May. Having then remained similarly employed until June 1941, by which stage No. 53 was operating out of St. Eval in Ansons of Coastal Command, Carbis was embarked for South Africa, where he undertook pilot training and served for the remainder of the War.

Selected for an Officer Cadet Training Unit in January 1952, after attending a string of Flying Training Schools, Carbis was duly appointed a Pilot Officer in March 1952, and among other duties that year, was posted to the Air Ministry on attachment to the Battle of Britain Display Team.

Then in the summer of 1954, he commenced his helicopter pilot training with Westland Aircraft Co. at Yeovil and, on qualifying at the end of the same year, was posted to No. 194 Squadron out in Malaya, where he was advanced to Flight Lieutenant in September 1955 and flew operationally in Sycamore helicopters until returning to the U.K. in August 1957.

As illustrated by an accompanying newspaper article, it was a protracted period of active service in which 194 Squadron was responsible for evacuating 1500 casualties from the jungle, ‘ranging from sick Aborigine children to wounded and captured terrorists’ - so, too, the more gruesome task of transporting the bodies of terrorists killed by the security forces. It was also a period in which Carbis devised a new method of carrying supplies, namely by suspending a metal drum outside the helicopter and lowering it from just above the jungle canopy.

As it transpired, and after qualifying on Dragonfly helicopters, Carbis undertook a second tour in the Far East from January 1960 to July 1962, when he served as a helicopter flying instructor at Kai Tak, and while serving with 225 Squadron at R.A.F. Odiham he also qualified on Whirlwinds. His final appointment was in No. 202 Squadron and he was placed on the Retired List in July 1969.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s Buckingham Palace D.F.C. investiture letter, dated 12 February 1958, and related congratulatory letters from Air Marshal the Earl of Brandon, C.-in-C. Far East Air Force, dated November 1957, and Air Commodore R. C. Mead, A.O.C. No. 81 Group, and telegram from the Group Captain, Kuala Lumpur, dated 6 December 1957; the certificate for his Coronation Medal 1953; a letter from the Duke of Edinburgh’s secretary thanking the recipient for piloting the Duke in Malaya, dated aboard the royal yacht on 5 November 1956, together with a signed photograph of the Duke; and another letter from Air Vice-Marshal W. H. Kyle acknowledging the C.-in-C’s thanks for his part in piloting General Festing on the Malaya front; his commission warrant for the rank of Pilot Officer, dated 27 March 1952, and several photographs relevant to his time in Malaya.

Together with a silver-plated presentation tankard inscribed ‘Flt. Lt. Tim Carbis from 194 Squadron, Far East Air Force’, and with engraved squadron crest above; an R.A.F. Small Arms Association, Squadron Cup (Revolver) Prize Medal for 1st Prize, 1963; a pair of R.A.F. cufflinks; a uniform medal riband bar; embroidered R.A.F. Wings (2), and No. 194 Squadron uniform patch, as worn in Malaya.



Thomas Carbis, father of the above, enlisted in the 1/4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment in August 1914 and first went out to France in mid-February 1915, when he saw action at Kemmel. But he was seriously wounded at St. Eloi that May, an incident recalled by his sister in her memoir Nellie Carbis Looks Back, which was published in 1978:

‘I was still at St. Peter’s School and on an afternoon in May 1915, I was called to the Headmaster’s desk and he broke the news to me that Tom had been wounded in action. I couldn’t take it in at first, and it was not until half an hour later that I put my head down and sobbed bitterly. Ben [their sibling] wrote and told us how he heard the news over the trench telephone - he was a Signaller - and was allowed to go to the dressing station where Tom lay, a strip of copper-banding from a shell embedded in the side of his thigh. He was given morphia and had dropped off into a doze when an officer of the H.A.C. stepping over the stretcher to look at the photographs of some actresses on the wall, lost his balance and sat down heavily on Tom’s leg. Probably that aggravated the injury and the nerve of the leg was severed. Tom rejected all attempts to persuade him to have the leg off and he spent the rest of the war in progress from one hospital to another. However, at 85 he still has two legs.’

Tom, who was awarded the Silver War Badge, was discharged in March 1917; his letters home from the Front, and those of his brother Ben, are held in the collection of the Lancashire Record Office.

Herbert Pawson served in the Royal Field Artillery and is understood to have been badly gassed.