QAIMNS R 1942 NURSING MEDALS DOCUMENTS PHOTOS BURMA WW2

Pricing & History

Sold for
Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Sold Date
Source eBay UK

This is a superb extremely rare collection of original documents and medals appertaining to one nursing sister from Bradeley Stoke on Trent who enlisted in the " Queen Alexandras Imperial Military Nursing Service" in 1941 and served with the 14th army in India and Burma . Army no [P/206854] SISTER RUTH CARTLIDGE.SISTER RUTH served in Bangalore in 1942, Delhi in 1944 and on Ramree island. Here is an exerpt from the Wikipedia write up on the infamous Ramree Island massacre :On 26 January in Operation Sankey , a Royal Marine force landed on the Island of Cheduba, which lies to the south of Ramree, to find that it was not occupied by the Japanese. On Ramree the Japanese garrison put up tenacious resistance. The 36th Indian Infantry Brigade landed with RAF and Royal Marine units. When the Marines outflanked a Japanese stronghold the nine hundred defenders within it abandoned the base and marched to join a larger battalion of Japanese soldiers across the island. The route forced the Japanese to cross 16 kilometres of mangrove swamps and as they struggled through the thick forests the British forces encircled the area of the swampland. Trapped in deep mud-filled land, tropical diseases soon started afflicting the soldiers, as well as scorpions , tropical mosquitoes , and saltwater crocodiles .Repeated calls by the British for the Japanese to surrender were ignored: the Marines holding the perimeter shot any Japanese attempting to escape, while within the swampland hundreds of soldiers died over the course of several days for lack of food or drinking water. Some, including naturalist Bruce Wright , claimed that the crocodiles attacked and ate numerous soldiers: "That night [of the 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [motor launch] crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left...Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive." [2] These figures are disputed. When the British eventually moved in on the swamp, they found that of the nine hundred troops that originally fled into the swamp, only around twenty seriously wounded and weakened Japanese soldiers were captured . In all, about 500 Japanese soldiers escaped from Ramree despite the intense blockade instituted to stop them. If Wright's claim is true, however, the Ramree crocodile attacks would be the worst in recorded history. [1] (The Guinness Book of Records lists the Ramree crocodile attacks under the heading "The Greatest Disaster Suffered from Animals" (2550). The British Burma Star Organisation ( .uk ) seems to lend credence to the swamp attack stories but appears to draw a distinction between the 20 Japanese survivors of one attack and the 1,000 Japanese who were left to fend for themselves in the swamp.) Contents of the lot include :BURMA STAR39/45 STARDEFENCE MEDALWAR MEDALRIBBON BARMEDAL CERTIFICATECAPE / TIPPET MEDAL [ VERY HARD TO OBTAIN] IDENTITY CARD FOR ARMY IN INDIA [ VERY HARD TO OBTAIN] ARMY BOOK, X04 WOMEN OFFICERS RELEASE BOOKARMY FORM , X203 RELEASE CERTIFICATE FOR 5TH MARCH 19463 X BLACK AND WHITE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH PRINTS, ONE OF WHICH IS A GROUP PHOTO TAKEN IN BANGALORE JUNE 1942, ONE IS FROM DELHI TAKEN NOVEMBER 1944,WHILE ON LEAVE AND THE LARGER OF THE TRIO TAKEN ON JANUARY 2ND 1941 FOR HER IDENTITY CARD AND USED AS POST CARD THERE IS ALSO A LOCAL NEWSPAPER SUPPLEMENT FROM APRIL 1995 WHICH AS WELL AS HER PHOTOGRAPH RELATES SOME OF HER STORY AS AN ARMY NURSEplenty of scope for further researcha true collectors lot hopefully the photos will answer most questions but feel free to ask Check out my other ite... read more

Items in the Price Guide are obtained exclusively from licensors and partners solely for our members’ research needs.

Flag item for content or copyright

If this item contains incorrect or inappropriate information please contact us here to flag it for review.

If you are the originator/copyright holder of this photo/item and would prefer it be excluded from our community, contact us here for removal.