Beschreibung:

A Good Series of Awards to Members of the S.A.S. The following lot was withdrawn due to the recipient having been incorrectly identified: The highly important and emotive campaign service group of three awarded to Private R. Cole Parachute Regiment and Special Air Service Regiment, one of the gallant nine-strong S.A.S. team who so gallantly defended Mirbat against overwhelming odds in July 1972: as a machine-gunner on the roof of “BATT” house, he played a prominent role in the action and was also responsible for guiding in a rescue helicopter and a jet air strike General Service 1962, 3 clasps, Radfan, Dhofar, Northern Ireland (23854666 Pte. R. Cole Para); Omani General Service Medal, with Dhofar clasp; Omani As Sumood Medal, these last two unnamed as issued, mounted as worn, nearly extremely fine (3) £6000-8000 Footnote 23854666 Private Roger Alan Cole is verified as having participated in the defence of Mirbat in Major A. R. Tinson’s Awards of the Sultanate of Oman. Few, if any, S.A.S. actions better portray the professionalism of the Regiment and the devastating damage just a handful of its men can inflict upon far superior enemy forces: surrounded by some 250 determined warriors of the Dhofar Liberation Front, the whole equipped with grenades and AK-47s (in addition to mortars, anti-tank rifles and rocket-launchers), this resilient nine-strong S.A.S. team, commanded by 23 year old Captain M. J. A. Kealy, in company with one Omani artilleryman, 30 odd Askaris from northern Oman (equipped with .303-inch rifles), and 25 men of the Dhofar Gendarmerie, managed to repulse a series of ferocious assaults over a period of two or three hours - by the time rescue arrived in the form of another S.A.S. Squadron, the terrorists had left behind 30 dead and 10 wounded, versus allied losses of four dead and three seriously wounded (many other terrorist casualties were carried off the battlefield by their retreating comrades). Kealy received an immediate D.S.O., while his men added a D.C.M., an M.M. and a ‘mention’ to the Regiment’s hard-won tally of Honours and Awards. The ‘mention’ was a posthumous award to Sergeant Talaiyasi Labalaba, S.A.S., a Fijian, who, with exception of just one mortar, manned the only artillery piece in the allies’ armoury, a 1939-45 War-vintage 25-pounder, under a hail of fire until shot dead - the gun shield was found to riddled with bullet holes, while the barrel was depressed through 45 degrees, Labalaba having engaged the opposition over open sights (his last message over the radio said “Enemy now very close. I’ve been chinned but I’m alright”): the campaign to have his ‘mention’ changed to a posthumous V.C. continues. At the time of the enemy attack on 19 July 1972, the coastal village of Mirbat was a ‘desolate barbed-wire enclave ... a huddle of flat-topped houses and a couple of ancient, mud-walled forts flanked on two sides by sea, forty miles from the provincial capital, Salalah. Children and insects were numerous, but not much else’, excepting, of course, as Tony Geraghty also describes in Who Dares Wins, the occasional terrorist mortar bomb that came sailing over the perimeter fence. The resident S.A.S. men, who were due to be airlifted out the following day, after three months of training work with local forces (and accordingly dubbed “Batmen” by their comrades), were possibly a little more relaxed than usual. Indeed as the enemy’s attack commenced in the early morning hours, Captain Kealy hastily donned a pair of flip-flops before ascending to the roof of “BATT” house to see what an earth was happening. It was, as Tony Geragthy so rightly observes, ‘the start of a battle as remarkable as that fought at Rorke’s Drift during the Zulu War.’ For his own part, Roger Cole was allocated to man one of the machine-guns on the roof of “BATT” house, a role he played to good effect, and one which is mentioned by Colonel Tony Jeapes in S.A.S. Operation Oman, but using the pseudonym “Chapman”, a conclusion arrive