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A private buyer from the United Kingdom had the winning bid for a Canadian Victoria Cross awarded to Lt.-Col. David Currie during the bitter fighting in Normandy in 1944.
Currie’s VC and related medals and memorabilia sold for $550,000 at an auction Wednesday in London. The price was $50,000 above the minimum bid for the items. A 20-per-cent buyer’s premium raised the total cost to the buyer to $660,000.
Since the medals are considered culturally significant, they won’t be allowed to leave Canada without an export permit. Before that is issued, Canadian buyers must be given an opportunity to purchase them from their new owner.
In August 1944, Currie, then a major in the the 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (The South Alberta Regiment), led a small group of Canadian soldiers to seal a gap in the Allied lines that trapped tens of thousands of German soldiers inside the Falaise Pocket.
“Throughout three days and nights of fierce fighting, Major Currie’s gallant conduct and contempt for danger set a magnificent example to all ranks of the force under his command,” his Victoria Cross citation read.
He was the only Canadian to earn a VC in the D-Day and Normandy campaigns and one of only 12 Canadians to earn the Commonwealth’s highest honour for bravery during the Second World War.
A famous photograph of Currie, pistol in hand, with captured German soldiers was described by historian C.P. Stacey “as close as we are ever likely to come to a photograph of a man winning the Victoria Cross.”
Currie, a Saskatchewan native, was later named Sergeant of Arms of the House of Commons by prime minister John Diefenbaker.
After he died in Ottawa in 1986, his widow, Isabel, sold the VC to a private collector in Canada. That collector cared for them until this summer when he decided to put it up for auction.
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
Currie’s VC and related medals and memorabilia sold for $550,000 at an auction Wednesday in London. The price was $50,000 above the minimum bid for the items. A 20-per-cent buyer’s premium raised the total cost to the buyer to $660,000.
Since the medals are considered culturally significant, they won’t be allowed to leave Canada without an export permit. Before that is issued, Canadian buyers must be given an opportunity to purchase them from their new owner.
In August 1944, Currie, then a major in the the 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (The South Alberta Regiment), led a small group of Canadian soldiers to seal a gap in the Allied lines that trapped tens of thousands of German soldiers inside the Falaise Pocket.
“Throughout three days and nights of fierce fighting, Major Currie’s gallant conduct and contempt for danger set a magnificent example to all ranks of the force under his command,” his Victoria Cross citation read.
He was the only Canadian to earn a VC in the D-Day and Normandy campaigns and one of only 12 Canadians to earn the Commonwealth’s highest honour for bravery during the Second World War.
A famous photograph of Currie, pistol in hand, with captured German soldiers was described by historian C.P. Stacey “as close as we are ever likely to come to a photograph of a man winning the Victoria Cross.”
Currie, a Saskatchewan native, was later named Sergeant of Arms of the House of Commons by prime minister John Diefenbaker.
After he died in Ottawa in 1986, his widow, Isabel, sold the VC to a private collector in Canada. That collector cared for them until this summer when he decided to put it up for auction.
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
