Beschreibung:

By order of the recipient: the remarkable and historically significant Operation Mikado/ Plum Duff pair of medals to Captain Andrew Legg, 22nd Special Air Service Regiment and Royal Hampshire Regiment, offered together with his Beret and associated memorabilia: Medals: General Service 1962-2007, clasp: Northern Ireland (LT A LEGG R HAMPS), mounted individually for wearing, uneven toning but otherwise extremely fine; South Atlantic, with three loose rosettes (CAPT A LEGG R HAMPS (SAS)), in original card box stamped 'WITH ROSETTE', extremely fine. [3] Together with: the recipient's beret, with OR's fabric badge as commonly worn by S.A.S. officers; the map which he carried on his mission into South America, showing, in small scale and without grid-lines or significant details, Tierra del Fuego and adjacent areas; his dress miniature GSM, his S.A.S. stable belt, blue fabric with metal buckle bearing the Regiment's winged dagger badge; an S.A.S. blue winged parachute badge, and a gold-on-red mess dress parachute badge; four S.A.S. Captain's rank slides; an S.A.S. wall plaque; and a copy of 'Ultimate Acceptance', the book written by the recipient about Operation Plum Duff, under the pseudonym William Barnes. Graduated from the University of Reading with a MSc in Applied Mathematics in 1976. joined the Royal Hampshire regiment in Northern Ireland in March 1977 via Sandurst Direct Entry Course No 9. Passed S.A.S. selection test and the subsequent officer's week in August 1978, but obliged to remain with his Regiment for another tour in Northern Ireland, and then required to take the selection test again, owing to a change of training personnel. Passed S.A.S. selection for a second time in August 1980, and joined B Squadron as a Troop Commander in January 1981. Served with the S.A.S. in Oman, Northern Ireland, and as part of the UK Anti-Terrorist team. Operation Mikado was a plan conceived at senior government level to deploy elements of the S.A.S. to Argentina to destroy the Exocet missiles that threatened the Falklands Taskforce, together with the pilots and aircraft based at Rio Grande. Operation Plum Duff was the code-name for an initial reconnaissance patrol to be led by Captain Legg which, during planning, mutated into a dual reconnaissance and/or opportunistic assault role. One consequence of this was that the eight man team carried explosives, and were obliged to reduce their allocation of rations to provide capacity for them. Legg, described as 'an unconventional officer who was popular with his men' flew via Ascension Island to a location over the frigid waters of the South Atlantic, where he and his team parachuted out of a specially converted C130 'Hercules', plunging with their equipment into the ice cold and turbulent ocean to await recovery by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Transferred by stages to the Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Invincible, they set off on the last 450 miles of their journey in a stripped down Sea King helicopter, with a crew that specialised in difficult insertions and had trained to fly using night vision goggles. Planning had been conducted without any meaningful information about the military situation that they would face upon arrival, and unusually, the team themselves had been largely excluded from the deliberations. This had forced Legg to adopt a short term, reactive mindset. Upon approaching the primary drop off point, and believing that it might have been compromised, he ordered the crew to continue to a secondary location. They had been detected by Argentine radar, and the necessity of deploying countermeasures, together with foul weather, prevented this. Eventually they put down on the Chilean side of the border, and Legg set out to lead his men east into Argentina. Presently the inadequacy of their rations forced them to request a resupply using their increasingly erratic radio. By this stage their superiors in Hereford knew that the Argentines were aware of their presence, and had assumed that th