Orders, Decorations and Medals

Wing Commander Bill Traynor, MA (Cantab.)

Bill Traynor, my Father, was born at Barrow-in-Furness on 3 January 1919, where his Father was a pattern maker in the Vickers shipyard. In the early 1920s the family moved to Coventry when my grandfather secured a job in the car industry. Bill attended The Bablake School, Coventry, from where he went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from which he obtained a BA in 1940 later advanced to an MA.

Bill joined the Meteorological Office in January 1941. Commissioned into the R.A.F., he served throughout the rest of the War and was demobilized in July 1946. In September of that year he was appointed Physics Master at King Edward's School, Birmingham, remaining there until he retired in 1982.

In 1947 Bill joined the school unit of the Air Training Corps. When the Combined Cadet Force was rormed in 1949 he became Commanding Officer of the R.A.F. Section. In 1972 he took over command of the whole contingent, retiring with the rank of Wing Commander.

My Father started to collect medals in 1979, joining the O.M.R.S. and the Birmingham Medal Society. He served on the committee of the latter and was its president from 1995 to 1998. Naturally, because of his R.A.F. background, he specialised in collecting medals and groups to those who had served in the R.F.C. and the R.A.F., being especially attracted to gallantry awards and unusual combinations of medals and bars.

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