Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Six: Staff Sergeant G. Roberts, Royal Engineers, who was captured and taken Prisoner of War at the Fall of Singapore and set to work on the ‘Railway of Death’ by his Japanese captors

1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Malaya, G.VI.R. (1871429 Cpl. G. Roberts. R.E.) this a slightly later issue; Army L.S. & G.C., E.II.R., 1st issue, Regular Army (1871429 S/Sgt. G. Roberts. R.E.) number officially corrected on last; together with a R.E. Training Brigade cross country running medal, bronze, the reverse named and dated 1935, good very fine or better (7) £240-£280

This lot is to be sold as part of a special collection, Medals from the Collection of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward De Santis.

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Gerald Roberts was born in Hackney, London on 12 November 1913 and enlisted in the Royal Engineers as a Sapper in March 1935. Having then attended a Searchlight Commander’s Course, he was posted to 35 Fortress Company, R.E., and embarked for Singapore in December 1936. And he was likewise employed – probably just south of Singapore on Pulau Brani island – when the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941.

Among those taken Prisoner of War on Singapore’s fall on 15 February 1942, Roberts would have been interned at Changi. But official records reveal that he was later transferred to No. 4 sub camp at Kanburi (Kanchanburi) in Thailand, from whence he would have been forced to work on the notorious ‘Railway of Death’. He somehow survived that ordeal and was liberated in August 1945.

Post-war, Roberts saw further active service in the Malaya Emergency and was awarded his L.S. and G.C. Medal in 1953. Having then been discharged in 1957, he settled in Portsmouth, Hampshire, where he died in November 1982.