Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Second World War North-West Europe campaign service group of four awarded to Captain J. H. W. Jackson, Royal Artillery, attached No. 652 (A.O.P.) Squadron, Royal Air Force

1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals, all unnamed, good very fine or better (4) £250-350

Jeffrey Howard Wansey Jackson was born in October 1919 and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery as a 2nd Lieutenant in October 1940. Advanced to Lieutenant in April 1942 and to Temporary Captain that June, he qualified as a pilot in Austers and joined the strength of No. 652 (Air Observation Post) Squadron, Royal Air Force, in readiness for the Normandy invasion. The unit’s priority task was to spot for Allied artillery, work that sometimes entailed drawing enemy fire to reveal their gun positions:

‘We landed with Ground Party at H+5 on D-Day 6 June 1944, near Arromanches at a little village called Courseilles. Throughout the month we remained in the small bridgehead after an unpleasant little battle with the Radar Station at La Deliverande - an enemy pocket. Our first Advanced Landing Ground at Beny-sur-Mer proved too hot and we moved to Reviers ... During the month [July] the Yank Fortresses bombed Caen and my Auster got a few holes in it from exploding ammunition. We leave 3rd Canadian Division and go to 6th Airborne Division, and then to 49 (W.R.) Division ... ’

As evidenced by further monthly reports kept by Jackson, his unit moved on to Belgium and Holland and was involved in operations on the River Maas, while in December 1944, as a result of the Ardennes offensive, its Auster pilots were rushed down to ‘plug the gap - flying furiously throughout Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and on till the end of the month’ . In late January 1945, after further flying in the Roer sector in support of 12 Corps - ‘one of our pilot’s got the D.F.C. for his work in this battle’ - Jackson returned to the U.K. on leave, but he was back on active service in the following month, this time employed in a clandestine role:

‘Spent most of the month on cloak and dagger work, intermingled with a little shooting on the banks of the Maas. We are in a large ‘Luny Bin’ but quite comfortable. Weather throughout the month atrocious!’

Jackson refers to continuing ‘cloak and dagger work’ in March and appears to have come into contact with members of I.S. 9 (Western European Area), a component of M.I. 9, during this period, a unit charged with rounding up our own P.O.Ws as the Allies advanced - and, no doubt, taking witness statements from them - but one which also had responsibility for getting members of the Dutch Resistance to carry out intelligence gathering missions. He ended the War at Wilhelmshaven, having latterly returned to spotter duties with a Polish Armoured Division.

Advanced to substantive Captain in October 1946, Jackson was attached to H.Q. B.A.O.R. in the late 1940s, and, according to documentation and photographs in the below described scrapbook, might well have flown in support of the Berlin Airlift. He also appears to have served in ‘2 Reconnaissance Squadron’ - ‘we mapped all Russian occupied Germany and the Russians didn’t know’.

Sold with a fascinating scrapbook, covering the recipient’s career from the Normandy landings through to post-war Germany as a member of the B.A.O.R., the contents including his handwritten monthly reports, amidst a mass of photographs (in excess of 250 images), many being air-to-ground intelligence shots taken from 652’s Austers, but also including a fine series of pictures taken in the chaos of immediate post-war Germany; together with assorted banknotes, newspaper cuttings, leaflets and other printed matter, the latter including a German Intelligence map of Christchurch, ‘one of thousands covering the whole of G.B. found buried after the unconditional surrender ... No doubt they will prove useful for World War III’, and even a signed receipt for ‘1 - Mercedes Benz’, delivered by Jackson to H.Q., 31st A.A. Artillery Brigade on 21 May 1945, ‘in compliance of orders of 21st Army Group, re. handing-in enemy equipment’; examples of German and Allied ‘anti-radar paper’ from the Caen battlefront; and several embroidered unit shoulder flashes.