Africa Star 1940-43 awarded to Sergeant Fred Darking, Royal Engineers

Copper-zinc alloy medal in the form of a six-pointed star, on the obverse, the royal cypher, 'GRVI', for King George VI (1895-1952), within circlet bearing the medal name, 'The Africa Star', surmounted by a crown. The medal is suspended by a ring from a pale buff ribbon with central red stripe flanked by light and dark blue stripes.

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.

Instituted in 1943, the Africa Star was awarded to British and Commonwealth personnel who served in the operational area of North Africa between the 10 June 1940 and 12 May 1943 during World War Two (1939-1945). The pale buff colour of the ribbon represents the desert sand; the dark blue, the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy; the pale blue, the Royal Air Force, and the red, the Army.

From a medal group awarded to Sergeant Fred Darking, Royal Engineers, comprising: 1939-45 Star, Africa Star 1940-43, Defence Medal 1939-45 and France and Germany Star 1944-45.