Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Seven: Sergeant R. Kirk, Coldstream Guards, later Corps of Military Police and 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade, who was reprimanded for shooting down a Luftwaffe plane during the Evacuation at Dunkirk, and later became a Gold Medal winning philatelist

General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine (2656638. Gdsmn. R. Kirk. C. Gds.) number officially corrected; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Italy Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, mounted court-style for display; together with the recipient’s Dunkirk Medal, traces of verdigris to F&G Star, otherwise good very fine (8) £180-£220

Reginald Kirk, a native of Wincobank, near Sheffield, attested for the Coldstream Guards in 1934 for four years where he took part in the Trooping the Colour and guarding of Buckingham and St James' Palaces and the Tower of London in 1935. His unit had a rare inspection by King Edward VIII at Wellington Barracks. He served with the 3rd Battalion in Palestine in 1936, where he had a painful encounter with a scorpion. Discharged on 12 August 1938, having served in an exemplary manner, he spent a short time at Sheffield Post Office, before he was back in as a reservist in June 1939. At this time the authorities were building up the Corps of Military Police (about a 1000 Guardsmen had joined the Military Police), and Kirk followed, joining them on 2 September 1939, two days before the declaration of the War.

Kirk went with the Military Police to Arras with the British Expeditionary Force on 7 September 1939. On 10 May 1940 the Germans cut off Arras and the Channel Ports. On that morning, having heard heavy gunfire, Kirk took a motorbike to escort Staff Officer Colonel Herbert to Brussels, they were stopped at the Belgian border and let through after some arguments, and returned back to Arras later going through towns which were sometimes under fire from dive bombing Stukas. ‘A few days before Dunkirk evacuation, Kirk acted on his own initiative and found himself in trouble. A flight of Stuka dive bombers flew 400 feet over the flat Belgian fields. He had kept his short Lee Enfield Mark III loaded with five rounds, he pointed it an aircraft’s length in front of one of the Stukas and fired all the rounds off at the Luftwaffe Aircraft, he hit it and it crashed into the sea, he was ecstatic but there was no commendation for Reg Kirk, in fact he was quizzed “Who told you to fire on that plane?” by the miserable Sergeant “Tombstone Joe”. He had to produce his Army Book and told “You’ll be on an Army Form B252, a charge sheet”, fortunately for him the Commanding Officer had moved on, and the process of dealing with this simply fizzled away.’

Serving in Italy in 1943 Kirk volunteered for the 2nd Parachute Brigade, to complete the War as a Paratrooper. On one occasion he was photographed as his unit landed in Salonica, Greece in late 1944 by flat bottom landing craft. Demobilised in November 1945, he transferred to the Class Z Reserve on 27 August 1946.

Returning to the Sheffield Post Office, Kirk subsequently became a keen philatelist, and built up a good collection of Hong Kong stamps, followed by a collection of covers, envelopes and post-cards carried by vessels of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. At the World Philatelic Exhibition in Stockholm he was awarded a gold medal for his display of P & O covers between 1836 and 1914.

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