Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Colonel H. O. Bates, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, late Royal Army Ordnance Corps

Indian Army L.S.& G.C., G.VI.R. (Lt. Col., R.A.O.C.); India Service Medal 1939-45 (Lt. Col., R.A.O.C.); Pakistan Independence Medal 1947 (Lt. Col., R.A.O.C.), mounted as worn, very fine (3) £120-160

Herbert Owen Bates was born in Catford, South London on 11 May 1907. He was commissioned in 1932 and served throughout the Second World War with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in India. Promoted Major in 1942, he was appointed Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in November 1945 and was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1952. He retired with the honorary rank of Colonel in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1955. After leaving the Army, as a qualified engineer and a member of two engineering institutes (M.I.E.E. and A.M.I. Mech. E.), he subsequently became an engineering manager. Colonel Bates died in Leamington Spa on 5 April 1988.

Sold with a letter addressed to ‘Lieut. Colonel H. O. Bates’, dated New Delhi, 1 January 1946, from General Auchinleck, C-in-C India, thanking everyone who worked on the staff during the war (facsimile signature); copied birth and death certificates and articles from the Indiaman on the India Service and Pakistan Independence Medals in which Col. Bates is cited. Also with an original copy of the book Defence Headquarters, published by the War Department in 1945, ii, 116pp, dealing with the organisation and procedure within the India Defence Headquarters.