Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Private A. Colvin, Winnipeg Grenadiers, who was taken P.O.W. at the fall of Hong Kong

1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; Defence Medal 1939-45, silver; Canadian Voluntary Service Medal, with overseas and Hong Kong clasps; War Medal 1939-45, silver, mounted court-style as worn, together with Canadian Legion cuff-links and lapel badge, ‘HK’ enamelled lapel badge, ‘General Service’ lapel badge, the reverse numbered ‘762654’, and Winnipeg Grenadiers’ cap badge, good very fine (11) £180-220

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of Awards to the Canadian Forces.

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Alexander Colvin enlisted in the Winnipeg Grenadiers as a Private in April 1940 and would have served on garrison duty in Jamaica and Bermuda prior to being embarked for Hong Kong in October 1941.

What followed in the desperate struggle to defend the colony that December resulted in the decimation of the regiment’s ranks - one of its number, Company Sergeant-Major John Osborn, winning the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the fighting on 19 December. For his own part, Colvin was among those to be taken prisoner. Liberated on 28 August 1945, he was discharged back in Winnipeg in April 1946. He subsequently settled in Victoria, B.C., where he was a member of the local Hong Kong Veterans branch - accompanying National Convention 1985 brochure, refers.

Sold with a fine array of original wartime photographs (approximately 30 images), including a P.O.W. group photograph taken on liberation, together with hand written church membership certificate, dated at Shamshuipo P.O.W. camp on 25 April 1943, in the hand of Chaplain Laite, also of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, an embossed Christmas Greetings 1943 card from Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, and a printed ‘Notice to Allied Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees’, dated in ink ‘Aug. 18 1945’; also with a copy of Shadow Lights of Shamshuipo, Hong Kong, by Staff Sergeant H. P. McNaughton, and copied service record.