Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part I)

Eight: Lieutenant T. L. Palmer, Straits Settlement Volunteer Forces, late Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force

British War and Victory Medals, naming erased; 1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; Defence and War Medals; Efficiency Medal, G.VI.R., Malaya (Lieut.); Greek Military Cross 1916-17, 3rd class, mounted as worn, good very fine and better (8) £180-220

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from the collection of Angela and the late Douglas Bertram.

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Thomas Lowden Palmer, who was born in July 1899, successfully applied for a commission in the Royal Naval Air Service direct from his studies at Queen’s College, Oxford, being appointed a Temporary Probationary Flight Officer in July 1917. Advanced to Temporary Flight Sub. Lieutenant in December of the same year, he went on to serve in Salonika and South Russia 1918-19, latterly as a Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, and was granted permission to wear the insignia of the Greek Military Cross, 3rd class, by Royal Licence in the London Gazette of 8 February 1919. He was subsequently placed on the Unemployed List a few months later.

At some stage between the Wars, Palmer was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Straits Settlement Volunteer Forces, and, as part of the Local Defence Forces in 1942, he was taken P.O.W. by the Japanese at Singapore, where he had been otherwise employed by the local merchants Sandilands Buttery & Co. He survived captivity, however, and was awarded his Efficiency Medal on 6 May 1949 (The Singapore Gazette refers).

Sold with original Colonial Secretary, Colony of Singapore 1939-45 War campaign medal forwarding slip, and a related Colonial Office reply to Palmer’s original application, dated 24 December 1948.