'Fascinating' medals worth £5k belonging to 'remarkable' D-Day pilot who flew over Normandy up for auction
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Flying Officer Leslie Valentine was believed to be the last living Second World War light bomber pilot when he died in 2014
Intriguing medals belonging to a ‘remarkable’ D-Day pilot are being put up for auction.
The honours and memorabilia of Flying Officer Leslie Valentine, based in Hampshire, will be going under the hammer on Thursday (October 1). Given an estimate of £4,000-£5,000, they’ll be sold by David Duggleby auctions in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
At the age of 24, F/O Valentine flew a bomber over the beaches during the Normandy landings at a height of just 50 feet. This spread smoke across the area to cover the invading forces fighting against the Nazis. He had to deal with crossfire between Allied battleships offshore and German coastal fortifications.
F/O Valentine’s Boston bomber was so low that ground troops opened fire on the aircraft, even by British forces who didn’t realise that he was on their side - including HMS Warspite, one of the seven Allied battleships involved in D-Day.
In a miraculous feat of bravery, the pilot managed to get his aircraft back to his squadron’s base at RAF Hartford Bridge near Hartley Witney. In an interview years later, he said: “The noise of the shells was deafening. I was flying at 250mph and I had to hold it steady, very steady. At that speed and height if I’d even sneezed that would have been it.”
F/O Valentine’s son Dudley has put his medals and memorabilia up for sale. He also served in the forces as a former bomber crewman, and given he’s now in his 80s and has no-one to pass these keepsakes onto, he wanted his father’s collection to be with someone who will treasure and preserve it.
Jessica Tarver, specialist at David Duggleby auctioneers, said: “We were honoured to be invited to handle such a fascinating collection relating to the astonishing story of a remarkable Second World War hero. Glasgow-born Leslie Valentine was just 24 when he flew that D-Day mission but he had already been in the war for four years, quitting medical school on the outbreak of the conflict in 1939 and volunteering, joining the Highland Light Infantry, a regiment that was involved in heavy fighting during the retreat to Dunkirk and the evacuation.”
F/O Valentine was one of just two people in his battalion to be accepted for initial pilot training in Canada. After completing his training on Blenheim and Boston bombers at RAF Bicester, he joined 88 Squadron at RAF Hartford Bridge, the field where the D-Day aircraft flew from.
Ms Tarver added: “Having miraculously survived the operation on D-Day, Flying Officer Valentine would go on to complete two back to back tours, sixty operations, involving daylight bombing of bridges, rail yards, enemy supply lines, submarine pens and V1 rocket launching sites among other things.”
The war hero returned to medical school following the conflict to complete his studies. He worked as a physiotherapist in Scotland for several years before getting into the pharmaceutical industry as a sales manager. F/O Valentine retired in 1987 and moved to Hethe in Oxfordshire, just five miles away from where he learned to fly bombers.
He died at the age of 95 in 2014, and is thought to be the very last living Second World War light bomber pilot when he passed. The medal group up for sale includes his Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and Croix de Guerre with silver star, one of France’s highest accolades for heroic deeds performed in the liberation of France. This is joined by other campaign medals. including 1939-46 Star, the Air Crew Europe Star, France and Germany Star and Defence Medal.
F/O Valentine’s wartime logbooks, pilot notes for Boston aircraft, associated Croix de Guerre paperwork, photographs and other ephemera are also in the lot. This also includes his personal copy of Friendly Smoke, a print of Michael Turner’s painting which depicts the aircraft’s flight over the D-Day beaches.
Further details about the auction, including start times, can be found on the David Duggleby website.