Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Second World War Far East prisoner of war’s B.E.M. group of four awarded to Private A. E. Pitman, Royal Army Medical Corps, who gallantly nursed his ailing comrades ‘in the most indescribably filthy conditions’ during a cholera epidemic of 1943

British Empire Medal, (Military) G.VI.R., 2nd issue (7263512 Pte. Arthur E. Pitman, R.A.M.C.); 1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; War Medal 1939-45, very fine and better (4) £600-800

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

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B.E.M. London Gazette 14 February 1947. The original recommendation states:

‘This Private was a prisoner of war in Thailand. During the cholera epidemic in the Summer of 1943, he did marvellous work. He nursed hundreds of cholera cases quite fearlessly, washed fed and cleansed them without any regard for his own safety, in the most indescribably filthy conditions. He was always cheerful, worked tirelessly and must at times have gone for days without sleep. Mere words cannot do justice to the work he carried out or the fine example he set, and by his personal care many lives were saved.’

Arthur Edward Pitman, a native of Weymouth, Dorset, was born in March 1914 and enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps in December 1936. Taken P.O.W. at the fall of Singapore in February 1942, while serving in No. 18 Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C., he was initially incarcerated in Changi, but afterwards was held at assorted camps in Thailand - we may be sure, therefore, that his skills were called upon to nurse those employed on the “Railway of Death”. His final camp was at Nakhom Pathon, where Colonel Coutts of the R.A.M.C. was the Senior British Officer (S.B.O.).

Sold with a bamboo stemmed lighter, the metalled ends inscribed ‘God Save The King’ and ‘Burma-Siam Railway’, and sleeper and dog-spikes taken from the bridge over the River Kwai and from the railway line about 8km. north-west of Kanchanaburi - these items since added by Ron Penhall.