Description
Second World War, Commandos (Lovats Scouts) group (First time on the open Market) Wounded in Action at Coloumbelles, North of Caen
1939-45 star; France and Germany star; Defence medal; 1939-45 war medal (these mounted as worn) Police Long Service and Good Conduct (Eliz II) Const, Anthony Airie (in box of issue); West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police Helmet plate; Leeds City Police helmet plate.
Anthony Airlie was born in Leeds in 1925, and joined the army in 1942.
After initial training he transferred to the Royal Artillery at Lark Hill, he then volunteered for Lovat Scouts (Commandos). He recalled some of Lvat’s men were gillies from his estate and were fantastic shots and great stalkers.
He met Lord Lovat while doing his commando training at Achnacarry, north of Fort William. Love the hereditary chief of the clan Fraser. He remembered Bill Millin being asked to be Lovats batman, but he turned this down, and Lovat agreed instead to take him on as his personal piper.
Airlie was with Lord Lovat and Bill Millin when he landed at Sword beech and made their way straight to Pegasus Bridge, and recalled the bombers overhead going to bomb Caen.
At one point he remembers with others taking a prisoner and having to shelter in a shell hole, where they slept until daylight.
In July he was at Coloumbelles, north of Caen, when the barn they were in came under fire from 84mm’s, he was wounded by shrapnel in the knee and was carried on a stretcher and strapped to a Jeep on a roof rack, and taken to an aid post 1/2 a mile away, the driver was conscious of a gap in the wall they were following as it was covered by German snipers, and he was shot in the foot with a wooden bullet.
After treatment he was loaded on a Tank landing craft, lined up with 40 on the floor, with no food or drink, and jabbed with Penicillin. He was taken to England and then London by Ambulance, given writing materials and loaded in a sausage transport carriage and transferred to Bathgate hospital, Scotland, where he stayed for 9 months, his wounds being treated by maggots.
When he received from his wounds, he served as a despatch rider messenger in Greece and the British Military Mission in the Sudan.
After the war he joined the Leeds Police. In 1974 he was injured when chasing a suspect in the Black Panther case, and fell from a wall.
He retired in July 1976
By the time he was married he still was not able to bend his knee.
He died in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, Wales on the 18th May 2019.
With three original photographs of him in Military, and later Police uniform.
The medals and badges were purchased from Mr Airlie in 2013 by a collector, at which time he interviewed him making the notes on which the above is taken.
Condition – NEF
