Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A post-War O.B.E group of seven awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel D. R. Wilson, who commanded the 1st Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment shortly after D-Day, being wounded twice in North West Europe in 1944, and going on to command the 2nd Battalion in Palestine, 1945-1947 and the 1st Battalion again in the Canal Zone, Egypt 1951, where he survived a bomb attack on his car

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Military) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge, silver-gilt, gilding almost all completed rubbed; 1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1945-48 (Lt. Col. D. R. Wilson. R. Lincolns.); Coronation 1953, mounted as worn together with the related miniature awards, good very fine (7) £400-£500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Gallantry Awards to the Lincolnshire Regiment.

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O.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1957.

Douglas Richard Wilson was born in 1912, into a family closely associated with the Lincolnshire Regiment, his father, Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. G. Wilson, having commanded the 1st Battalion during the Great War and afterwards in Ireland. Commissioned into the regiment as Second Lieutenant in 1932, he was advanced to Lieutenant in 1939 and Captain in 1941. He served during the Second World War in North West Europe post D-Day, and was injured on 12 June 1944 while serving as Temporary Major with the 2nd Battalion, and again on 7 August 1944 holding the rank of Acting Lieutenant-Colonel.

Wilson later served in Palestine, where he commanded the 2nd Battalion, Royal Lincolnshire Regiment from November 1945 to May 1947, and subsequently commanded the 1st Battalion in the Canal Zone, Egypt, where he was reported to have survived a bomb attack on his car, with the incident taking place in December 1951 on the outskirts of Ismailia. He retired with the rank of Honorary Brigadier in 1960.

Sold with the Bestowal Document for the O.B.E., dated 1 January 1957, in envelope addressed to ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas R. Wilson, O.B.E., The White Cottage, Wylye, Wiltshire; named Buckingham Palace certificate for the Coronation Medal 1953; Letter from the War Office, dated 5 April 1960, passing on The Queen’s thanks for long and valuable service; and two mounted photographs, dated 5 May 1956, of the ‘World War I’ and ‘World War II’ Veterans of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps.

Note: A contingent of Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps men was attached, as an extra Company, to the Lincolnshire Regiment in the Great War, the association being made official between the wars and a contingent of the B.V.R.C. again served, re-badged, with the Lincolns (mostly 2nd Battalion) in the Second World War. Individuals in these photos would therefore have served under both Wilson and his father.