Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The General Service Medal awarded to Sergeant M. D. Burbridge, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, attached SAS, who was ambushed and killed by the IRA whilst travelling in plain clothes with another serviceman returning from Rosemount Police Station, 1 April 1982. Their unmarked van was riddled by machine gun bullets near the Creggan Estate, and just outside of St. Eugene’s Catholic Cathedral

General Service 1962-2007, 1 clasp, Northern Ireland (24098414 LCpl. M. D. Burbridge. REME.) good very fine £1,200-£1,600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

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Provenance: Dix Noonan Webb, September 1998.

Michael David Burbridge was born in August 1950, and enlisted in the Army in September 1966. He was serving on his third tour of Northern Ireland when he was killed during an ambush, 1 April 1982:

‘Two soldiers were murdered in a Londonderry ambush yesterday by Provisional IRA terrorists armed with a machine gun.

Cpl Michael Ward, 29, of the Royal Signals, and Sgt Michael Burbridge, 31, of the REME, were hit by a hail of shots as they drove in an unmarked Mini van.

Both men were armed, but were wearing civilian clothes. They were returning to barracks after completing maintenance work on radio equipment at a police station [Rosemount] near the republican Creggan estate.

The gunmen had taken over a flat overlooking a road junction, holding the seven students who occupy the flat hostage since Wednesday night.

More than 50 shots were fired at the van as it reached the crossroads.

The vehicle then careered out of control down a one-way street and crashed into a baker’s shop. The shooting happened close to St Eugene’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and one of the first to reach the van was the Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly, whose residence adjoins the cathedral.

Cpl Ward was married with a six year old son and came from south west London. Sgt Burbridge was divorced and his parents live in south Oxfordshire.

Yesterday’s killings were exactly a week after a similar ambush in West Belfast when three members of the Royal Green Jackets were murdered by the Provisional IRA. On Sunday the IRA shot dead a senior police officer outside his church.’ (photocopy of newspaper cutting included with the lot refers).

Both Burbridge and Ward, were in fact attached to the SAS at this time, and the following is given in Raymond Murray’s The SAS in Ireland:

In the period 1981-87 the SAS shot dead as many as 26 people in Northern Ireland and one man drowned escaping from them... In the same period four ‘SAS men were shot dead by the IRA. Sergeant Michael Burbridge (parent regiment, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) aged 31, from South Oxfordshire and 29 year old Corporal Michael Ward (parent regiment, the Royal Corps of Signals), from south-west London were killed in a hail of bullets in an IRA ambush on 1 April 1982. They were dressed in plain clothes and were travelling from the Army/RUC post at Rosemount, Derry in a grey van, when the attack took place at 11.46am at Creggan Street just outside St. Eugene’s Cathedral. Four IRA men took part in the attack. They occupied a second floor flat at the junction of Creggan Road and Infirmary Road 15 hours before the shooting. As the van approached the junction, three of the IRA men, two of them armed with high velocity automatic rifles, and one with a handgun acting as back-up, stepped out in front of it and fired about 30 shots. The shooting was heard in the nearby parochial house. One of the priests gave the last rites. Priest and people lifted men out of the van to the street. The Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly, was also on the scene within minutes. He said, “The men had been riddled. It was an awful sight. A lot of people were hysterical. It is another terrible deed which demeans us all.’

Sergeant Burbridge is buried in Aldershot Military Cemetery, Hampshire.

Sold with a letter from Captain T. Lindsay, R.E.M.E., 8th Infantry Brigade, Londonderry, addressed to Burbridge’s widow at Farnham Surrey, dated 8 December 1982, ‘At long last I am pleased to forward the medal which belonged to your late husband. I am to understand that the medal is for your son Darren and if in fact this is correct I would appreciate it if you would pass the medal on to him.’ The letter has been cut in two with the result that one line of the text is missing; copied certificate of service and other research.