Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Warrant Officer L. R. Read, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, who gained membership of the Caterpillar Club after his No. 142 Squadron Wellington was downed by flak over Holland in May 1942

1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star, these neatly impressed on the reverse ‘745334 W.O. L. R. Read, R.A.F.’; Defence Medal 1939-45; War Medal 1939-45, this neatly impressed on the edge, ‘745334 W.O. L. R. Read, R.A.F.’; Air Efficiency Award, G.VI.R., 1st issue (745334 F. Sgt. L. R. Read, R.A.F.V.R.), together with the recipient’s Caterpillar Club membership badge, the reverse officially engraved, ‘F./S. L. R. Read’, this lacking one ‘ruby’ eye and the other damaged, the A.E. with official correction to initials and surname, all the medals late claims from the 1970s, generally good very fine (5) £200-300

Leslie Ronald Read commenced his operational tour as a Rear Gunner in No. 142 Squadron, a Wellington unit operating out of R.A.F. Binbrook, in March 1941, his first sortie being flown to Boulogne on the 15th. His pilot was Flight Lieutenant P. E. Dodson, who was to be awarded the D.F.C.

Read subsequently completed 19 further operational sorties in the period leading up to the loss of his aircraft during the ‘1000 Bomber Raid’ on Cologne on the night of 30-31 May 1942. Thus raids on such targets as Berlin, Bremen (twice), Duisberg, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Mannheim; so, too, no less than five additional trips to Cologne.

In an accompanying application for membership of the Goldfish Club, he states that his aircraft came down in the North Sea, off Grimsby in January 1942, after being hit by flak in a strike against Wilhelmshaven; accompanying research does not appear to confirm these claims.

More certain is the fact he took to his parachute on the night of 30-31 May 1942, after his Wellington was hit by flak on returning from the ‘1000 Bomber Raid’ on Cologne; a Wellington of No. 25 O.T.U. where he had been attending a gunnery course. Read landed in the grounds of a factory at Eindhoven and, after being interrogated in Amsterdam, was sent to Stalag Luft III, afterwards the scene of the famous ‘Great Escape’.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s Caterpillar Club and Goldfish Club membership cards, in the name of F./Sgt. L. R. Read’; ten wartime photographs, including two scenes fro Stalag Luft III, believed to be images of a funeral for an officer murdered after the Great Escape; the remnants of the M.O.D. forwarding letter for his Air Efficiency Award, dated 15 September 1978 and an old newspaper cutting with article, ‘My parachute won’t open!’, being the recipient’s account of his final sortie in May 1942, together with a typescript based on his flying log book entries, and copied O.R.B. entries.

The Caterpillar badge appears to be officially named on the reverse but is worn and in base metal