Orders, Decorations and Medals

The C.B.E., Second World War clandestine operations D.S.O., inter-war M.V.O. group of thirteen awarded to Colonel R. H. Quill, Royal Marines, who was C.O. of 30 Assault Unit, R.M., a jeep-bound Commando which on occasion operated in advance of the Allies in North-West Europe in order to capture secret enemy weapons and intelligence: the results obtained by Quill’s command were later credited with making a material contribution towards final victory - and with allowing us to get a head start in the post-war era in all manner of technical and scientific developments

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Military) Commander’s 2nd type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R. 1st issue, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse of the suspension bar officially dated ‘1945’; The Royal Victorian Order (M.V.O.) 4th class Member’s breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse officially numbered ‘1330’; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. R. H. Quill, R.M.L.I.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. R. H. Quill, R.M.L.I.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Italy Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals; U.S.A. Legion of Merit, Officer’s breast badge, gilt and enamel, unnamed, together with original card forwarding box for the 1939-45 campaign awards, the Great War awards polished, thus fine or better, the remainder extremely fine (13) £4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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C.B.E. London Gazette 12 June 1947.

D.S.O. London Gazette 11 December 1945:

‘For distinguished service during the War in Europe.’

M.V.O. London Gazette 2 April 1935:

‘On the occasion of the visit of His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester to Australia and New Zealand.’

U.S.A. Legion of Merit London Gazette 5 November 1946:

‘For service to the United States of America throughout the War.’

Raymond Humphery Quill was born in May 1897, the son of Major-General Richard Quill, C.B., and was educated at Wellington and Cheltenham. Commissioned into the R.M.L.I. at about the time of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, and following a brief period of training, he served out in the Dardanelles and in France, in which latter theatre of war he was mentioned for his ‘zeal, initiative and courage ... and resource under fire’ by Lieutenant-Colonel C. Omaston, Commanding R.M.A. Anti-Aircraft Brigade. Quill spent the remainder of the War aboard the battleship Lord Nelson out in the Aegean and Caspian and was onetime a personal aide to the S.N.O. Piraeus.

Between the Wars he enjoyed further seagoing appointments and was appointed M.V.O. in 1935 for his services during the Duke of Gloucester’s visit to Australia and New Zealand, the same year in which he was advanced to Major. But in the period leading up to the renewal of hostilities he was increasingly employed by Naval Intelligence, the period 1937-39 seeing him employed as a Staff Officer (Intelligence) out in Singapore. Returning home in the latter year, he took up another intelligence post at the Admiralty, and in 1940 he accompanied the Royal Marines Expedition to Iceland, where he managed to prevent the enemy from destroying their papers and documents - an opening success in intelligence gathering that would set the pattern for his later wartime career in North-West Europe. First of all, however, he was posted to the Middle East as a Staff Officer (Intelligence), in which capacity he served until returning home in 1944.

30 Assault Unit, R.M.

Thus ensued his final wartime appointment as C.O. of 30 Assault Unit, R.M., the jeep-bound Commando which on occasion operated ahead of the advancing Allies in North-West Europe in order to surprise the enemy and capture valuable secret papers and weapons. Comprising two dozen R.N. and R.M. officers, and around 300 R.M. Commandos and ratings, 30 A.U. went onto achieve some notable successes, not least the seizure of the enemy’s Naval H.Q. in Paris, complete with a mass of paperwork, the capture at Kiel of Dr. Walter, the inventor of high-speed hydrogen peroxide engines for torpedoes and U-Boats, and the discovery in a remote Bavarian schloss of the archives of the German Navy dating back to 1870.

Quill first arrived in France in November 1944, and, following early success at the German Naval H.Q. in Paris, moved on to a new assembly point for his unit at Genappe, near Brussels, in February 1945. Here he quickly sought out the co-operation of 21 Army Group and the U.S. 12th Army Group, as a result of which he was able to disperse a number of ‘field teams’ around likely hunting grounds, among them the Ruhr-Hartz mountains, the Westphalian Plain and Kiel. Yet the pace of the Allied advance often meant the unit found itself operating inside dangerous pockets of enemy resistance, but none of which ever kept Quill from keeping well forward in his command vehicle.

In early April the unit moved to Venlo on the east bank of the River Maas, and further specialists arrived to assist in the investigation into captured documents and hardware - one of them was heard to whisper that he was an atomic scientist. Two weeks later 30 A.U’s H.Q. was once again on the move, this time to Osnabruck, and in the coming weeks a number of important finds were made, not least on the unit’s subsequent arrival at Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. The former turned up one of Dr. Walter’s Walttherboot, a high-speed submarine which was fuelled by hydrogen peroxide, and the latter the hitherto unknown 50-knot hydrofoil. But it was at Kiel that 30 A.U. finally uncovered much of the secrecy surrounding the Third Reich’s military might.

Aware of the city’s potential importance to 30 A.U’s objectives, Quill had hastened to General Dempsey on the eve of the German surrender. Anxious that the enemy be allowed minimal time for sabotage, he asked for the General’s permission to enter the city ahead of the main Allied force. The General eventually agreed to the plan, but made it clear that no assistance would be forthcoming if 30 A.U. ran into trouble. In the event, most of the 40,000 enemy troops inside the battered city were more than ready to surrender, thereby allowing Quill and his men the opportunity to make a number of important arrests. Their biggest catch was Dr. Walther, who was picked up in his residence next door to the famous Waltherwerke complex. Added to which Quill’s men uncovered microfilms of all of his blue-prints and drawings, which had been hidden under the coal in his cellar. Meanwhile, another field team raced across Kile canal to Eckernforde, their haste being rewarded by examples of every enemy torpedo then in use, together with the plans of those yet to be put into manufacture.

Later, at Flensburg, Quill rushed to rescue one of his teams which had been apprehended by a group of senior enemy Naval officers. In his subsequent negotiations, the no-nonsense Colonel insisted that all details of research and development be handed over to his care. As one witness to these events later commented, ‘There followed a series of breathtaking discoveries, the average rate of finding new weapons for the first fortnight being about two a day’. Among them were a 25-knot, one-man midget submarine, a radio-controlled Hs. 293 glider bomb and the Blohm and Voss 143 jet-driven glider bomb. And more was to follow, another of Quill’s teams having sped southwards in time to capture the entire archive of the German Navy - this latter gold-mine was later passed to the control of Ian Fleming at Naval Intelligence.

At length, after many adventures and startling discoveries, 30 A.U. finally returned to the U.K. and was disbanded, ‘the sailors in jeeps’ having made a significant contribution to the war’s outcome and, equally important, to future development in the post-war era. As the Director of the Admiralty’s Torpedo and Mining Department later concluded, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the information obtained by 30 A.U. was both a material contribution towards winning the War, and also helped us to get well into the lead with various technical and scientific devices which all navies must have nowadays’. Quill was awarded the D.S.O., one of 38 won by the Royal Marines in the 1939-45 War, and the American Legion of Merit.

In the five years following the War, he commanded the R.M. Barracks at both Deal and Eastney, and was appointed an A.D.C. to H.M. King George VI. He also added a C.B.E. to his wartime accolades. Following his retirement, the Colonel pursued his interest in Horology, in which field he achieved a reputation that was second to none in this country. Author of the acclaimed and authoritative work, John Harrison: The Man Who Found Longitude, Quill died in December 1987, aged 90 years.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including Admiralty letters of notification for the award of the C.B.E., D.S.O. and Legion of Merit, the latter stating ‘For services as C.O. of 30 Assault Unit, from November 1944 to September 1945’; a letter from the Director of the Admiralty’s Torpedo and Mining Department, dated 1 January 1946, as quoted in part above; a hand-coloured map of a Mediterranean island, detailing Italian Army positions, a souvenir from Quill’s time as a Staff Officer ( Intelligence) out in that theatre from 1941-44; a watercolour sketch of the H.M.S. Gloucester at sea; a series of ship’s “flimsies” (13), ranging from his time in the Lord Nelson in the Great war through to an appointment as a Colonel in Intelligence on the Admiralty Naval Staff in 1948, and including an example from the captain of H.M.S. Sussex for the period July 1934 to October 1935 (‘His detachment has shown up extraordinarily well in Australia and they have been a credit to the Corps’); official passes / identity cards (3), for S.H.A.E.F., dated 20 February 1945, H.Q. 21 Army Group, dated 26 March 1945, and ‘Royal Navy Kiel’, dated 21 August 1945’; driving licenses (2), dated April 1945; and a copy of David Nutting’s history of 30th Assault Unit, R.M., Attain by Assault, in which Quill receives frequent mention.

Provenance: Sotheby’s, July 1996 (Lot 347).