Orders, Decorations and Medals

The M.B.E. group of five awarded to Sergeant R. W. Walls, British South Africa Police, late Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Military) Member’s 2nd type breast badge; British War and Victory Medals (P. Flt. Offr. R. W. Walls, R.N.A.S.); War Medal 1939-45; Army L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., crowned bust, Southern Rhodesia (32 Sgt. Mjr. R. W. Walls), together with a set of related uniform tunic ribands, mounted as worn, the earlier awards a little polished, but otherwise generally very fine or better (5) £400-500

Reginald William Walls, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls’ father, was born in Crowthorne, Berkshire in October 1899 and served aboard the training ship Worcester from April 1915 to April 1917. Subsequently appointed a Temporary Probationary Flying Officer in the Royal Naval Air Service in September of the latter year, he went on to pilot a variety of aircraft, including Curtiss, Avro, B.E. 2c and D.H. 4 types, and was transferred to the Unemployed List in April 1919, having latterly held the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the newly established Royal Air Force. Sometime thereafter he settled in Salisbury, Rhodesia, where at the time of his son’s birth in July 1926, he was serving as a Sergeant in the British South Africa Police, but further research is required to establish his final rank and the date of award for his M.B.E.

Sold with a a fine quality B.S.A.P gilt-metal cap badge, and an old B.S.A.P. crest wall plaque; a Christmas 1914 Queen Mary Tobacco Box, with “bullet pencil”; old embroidered R.A.F. uniform Wings, and R.N.A.S. and R.A.F. crest wall plaques, and other miscellaneous pieces, including a wristwatch and compass.

This is an O.B.E. (very tarnished) not an M.B.E. as catalogued - London Gazette 1 January 1950: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald William Walls, Southern Rhodesia Military Forces’