Medals on show where they belong (From Daily Echo)

Medals on show where they belong

2:05pm Wednesday 1st October 2008 in

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A HAMPSHIRE museum has won a battle to bring medals to their rightful home.

The Rifles Museum in Winchester saw off the opposition with a massive £17,000 bid at auction for the medals won in the Second World War.

Sgt John Hine, of the-then Winchester-based Rifle Brigade, won the Military Medal and bar in the North Africa campaign of 1942.

He emigrated to Australia after the war and has since died.

The medals became available and a retired Winchester major launched a fundraising campaign to secure the medals for the museum.

Major Ron Cassidy outbid others at the auction in London to win the medals and stop them going into a private collection. The medals will soon go on show at the museum in Peninsula Barracks.

The expected auction price had been up to £5,000 but the competition was fierce before Maj Cassidy made the winning bid. It was close to his upper limit of just under £20,000.

Maj Cassidy, who himself served in the Rifle Brigade, said: “The amount shows how people have responded to the appeal. It was a wonderful feeling to achieve what all these people who donated had set out to do.”

Maj Cassidy, 75, of Highcliffe, Winchester, said the medals were symbolic of the regiment’s involvement in one of the turning points of the Second World War.