The Eleventh Hour

Don’t you just hate it when this happens!

I’m on the verge of receiving the final proof for the book on 142 RAC and just before it’s due to arrive, the most amazing archive of photographs and documentation belonging to a Corporal of ‘B’ Squadron comes up for sale. Naturally, of course I have had to buy it and I hope that the images can get into the book, before the press proof is imminently signed off.

Now, there’s a story in this which I’ll briefly cover.

Back in 2001 when I was at university, I brought a black beret, a set of medals and a few items of paperwork to Corporal Stanley Crisp of 142 RAC from a militaria shop in Nottingham. I’d forgotten I had these until earlier this year when I destroyed a mass of paperwork I had kept from my university days and there in amongst it all were these items. Hard to believe that I had forgotten about them, I know, but I had.

I wrote an article about them in the last edition of the ‘Friends of the Suffolk Regiment’ magazine to shamelessly plug the forthcoming book and then just as I’ve posted them all out, up comes the paperwork and medals to the same man! Talk about coincidence.

Clearly the beret and the paperwork I brought twenty-five years ago was Stan’s but the medals perhaps not?A group ‘brought’ together by a dealer? Quite possibly, but probably not, as that dealer would have to the specific knowledge of what was right and believable and the medals were exactly what he was entitled to. Perhaps an innocent mistake? Family heirlooms do get split at various times and between various family members, but as his medals are in the recent grouping, I can’t help but think that he misplaced ‘his’ medals and then acquired another set to wear.

However, everything else is absolutely genuine and ‘right’ and today, there has been a happy reunion of all these items belonging to Corporal Stanley Crisp (seen below).

Together with his paybook, his income tax returns and his release book, were his proper medals, unmounted loose in their original box of issue and five superb photographs of his fellow comrades in 142 RAC.

The star item was a tiny 3” by 2” photo of 13 men stood beside a Mk. IV Churchill tank in Tunisia with men wearing the ribbon of the Africa Star. All are in Battledress and the tank bears the No. 7 in a square (a square being ‘B’ Squadron) so assuming (and it’s a big assumption) that the tanks were numbered 1-3 in No. 1 Troop and numbers 4-6 in No. 2 Troop, number 7 in No. 3 Troop belonged to Lieutenant Paddick - however, I can find no evidence yet of Stan serving in his crew, so it’s likely that it was a posed shot beside the nearest available tank.

Images of 142 RAC crews and their tanks are as rare as ‘rocking horse poo’ so it’s going into the plates section of the book without delay.

I will look deeper into these fantastic items when I get home later on tonight as I’ve literally rushed to collect them from the auctioneers in my lunch hour but I will be dropping my editor an email shortly to persuade her to get them included.

Talk about the 11th hour - it’s not even that but a minute to midnight!!! but I’ve brought them just in time to be seen by you all in the new book…..phew.