1939-45 Star awarded to Sergeant Fred Darking, Royal Engineers

Campaign medal made of copper zinc alloy in the form of a six-pointed star. On the obverse, the Royal Cypher, 'GRI VI', for King George VI, surmounted by a crown, with a circlet inscribed with, 'The 1939-1945 Star'. The medal is suspended from a dark blue, red and light blue ribbon.

Fred Darking (1911-1999) was born in 1911 and worked as a commercial artist in Nottingham before the Second World War. In 1940 he enlisted in the Army and served in the camouflage department of the Royal Engineers. Athough he was not an official War Artist, the sketches and watercolours that he produced in his spare time provide an important eye-witness record of the Channel crossing, the D-Day landings and subsequent campaign through France, Belgium and Holland to the crossing of the Rhine in 1945.

The 1939-45 Star was bestowed upon personnel who had seen service on one or more of a specific list of mainly overseas operational theatres. It was the first of eight very similar bronze campaign stars to be issued. The ribbon has three equal stripes of dark blue, red and light blue, symbolising the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force respectively.

From a medal group awarded to Sergeant Fred Darking, Royal Engineers.