The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection

A rare Second World War escaper’s M.M. awarded to Captain J. L. Warner, Reconnaissance Corps, late Queen’s Regiment, who made a spirited escape on being captured in the B.E.F. in May 1940, and afterwards served in the Commandos and the Chindits, including time as a Parachute Liaison Officer to H.Q. Special Forces

Military Medal, G.VI.R. (6088621 L. Cpl. J. L. Warner, The Queen’s R.), number officially corrected, good very fine
£1800-2200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Bill and Angela Strong Medal Collection.

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M.M. London Gazette 29 November 1940.

John Lee Warner was born in Dundalk, Eire in August 1919, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Lee Warner, D.S.O., M.C., and originally attended the R.N.C. Dartmouth but was withdrawn with his parents consent in October 1938, and enlisted in The Queen’s Regiment in May 1939. Posted to the B.E.F. in France in April 1940, he was captured just outside Abbeville on 20 May, and made his first bid for freedom just seven days later. Gallant Deeds of the War, by Captain J. E. A. Whitman, takes up the story:

‘For several days he walked steadily in the direction of the coast, making many detours to avoid various bodies of the enemy, and living mostly on what he could manage to pick up from the fields through which he passed. But at length he could go no farther until some rest had been obtained, and finding an empty hut belonging to a railwayman, he hid there. Although seen by a Frenchman, who rather unwisely spoke about his presence in the village, his luck held, and he remained concealed for six days, while kindly villagers cautiously smuggled food to him. From there he heard of the final evacuation of the British forces from Dunkirk, and he realised that his original hope of rejoining his comrades was now defeated. All he could do was to go on to the coast and trust to luck to find some means of crossing the Channel.

He started rather sooner than he had expected, for a German military railway service-man called on him and mistaking him for the French railwayman, demanded to know where his wife was, as she was wanted at once to operate the level-crossing gates near at hand. The quick-witted corporal assured the German that his wife was at the moment in Arras, and was peremptorily ordered to go and fetch her at once, an order which he lost no time in obeying, so far as his departure was concerned!
His luck held good. Meeting some English civilians, he was provided by one of them with a bicycle, on which he reached Etaples, where he fell in with two officers who were also trying to make their way home. They thereupon planned to seize a smack in the river; the corporal was to bring it to the lighthouse where the officers were hiding and the three would set out together.

But now the luck broke. German sentries would not allow the corporal to cross the bridge, and when he returned to the lighthouse he discovered it was occupied by Germans, and concluded that the officers must have been found by them, although, as it happened, they had managed to escape in time, and eventually reached England. Nothing for it but to continue his lone journey; and he reached first Boulogne and then Calais, and then back to Boulogne; but at neither place was it possible to secure any means of crossing the water. Unluckily, while reconnoitring the railway station, somebody stole the bicycle, together with his small stock of food; and he was once more reduced to the weary tramp in search of safety.

Reaching Le Touquet, he broke into an empty house to sleep; and was awakened by a German shaking his shoulder and demanding to know who he was and what he was doing there. His glib explanations failed to carry conviction, and he was arrested and brought before the Civil Commandant of the town, who promptly threatened to have him shot as a spy. This amiable individual ordered him to be taken to the Military Commandant, assisting his departure with a hearty kick which propelled him down six steps – incidentally, the only actual ill treatment he received at any time. After a brief enquiry he was imprisoned in a neighbouring village.

Needless to say he lost no time in seeking a means of escape; and finding that at one point one of the buildings overlooking the courtyard of his prison abutted on a wall which could not be seen by the German sentries, he managed to slip into the building, climb the wall, and drop down into the garden of an adjoining house, thence gaining the road.

Once again his luck changed. He succeeded in getting a lift in a car as far as Bertin, and although the car was stopped by German sentries who inspected the papers of the two men sitting in front of him, they took no notice of the other occupant. Reaching Etaples, he managed to raise another cycle from a Frenchman in exchange for a promissory note for 1500 francs, payable after the war. It says much for the Frenchman’s confidence in ultimate victory, as well as in our corporal, that he agreed to this transaction.

From all information it seemed that the only hope of eventual escape was to get to Spain. Passing through Abbeville, Rouen, and Pacy, he reached Paris; where a sergeant of the Gordon Highlanders agreed to join forces with him. A kindly British resident in that city gave them five hundred francs, and together they crossed into unoccupied territory at Leches. From here there was no difficulty, but at Toulouse the two parted company. They were warned that soldiers escaping into the adjacent neutral country were promptly interned. The sergeant determined to go on and try his luck, but the report proved true, and he was placed in a concentration camp. The cautious corporal, however, pushed on to Marseilles, and after about a fortnight, by various stratagems, managed to get away.

The pluck and endurance of this corporal cannot be too highly commended when it is realised that for six weeks he was wandering about, the greater part of the time alone and in a region where, unhappily, none could be sure whether the inhabitants could be trusted as friends. In his case, Fortune most certainly favoured the brave.’

Warner was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in March 1942, served in the Commandos from November 1942 until March 1944, with whom he qualified as a parachutist, and went on to witness further active service in Burma in the Reconnaissance Corps, where he gained a mention in despatches for his exploits with Wingate’s Chindits in the period March to August 1944 and was onetime a Parachute Liaison Officer to H.Q. Special Forces (London Gazette 26 April 1945 refers).

He was afterwards sent to the U.S.A. for special ‘human pick-up experiments by aircraft’ under the sponsorship of H.Q., South-East Asia Command, work that put ‘unusual stress on the body’. As a result of this and malaria contracted while with the Chindits, Warner relinquished his commission on account of disability in July 1946, and sometime thereafter joined the Foreign Office.

Sold with an original wartime newspaper cutting, copy M.I. 9 escape debrief (4pp.), hand written service details and a copy of Gallant Deeds of the War.