Lot 5236

Description

Group of Five: Australian Active Service Medal 1945-1975, - clasp - Malaya; General Service Medal 1918-62 (EIIR), - clasp - Malaya; Australian Service Medal 1945-1975, - clasp - SE Asia; Pingat Jasa Malaysia; Australian Defence Medal. 411518 L.H.Bayliss on second medal, other medals are replicas. Named medal impressed. Display mounted in a timber frame under perspex and with an Infantry Combat badge above as well as a plaque with details, '2/411518 Lt. L.H.Bayliss 1RAR & 2RAR', medals extremely fine - uncirculated.

Note on back of frame indicates the GSM is the only medal issued to Lt Bayliss and the others are for display purposes only.

Lt Bayliss committed suicide on 19 February 1963. The report in The Courier Mail, Thursday 21 February 1963, p5 stated, 'A young Army lieutenant who was shot with a sub-machine gun on Tuesday night had been involved in a broken romance. Police learned this yesterday. The dead man was Lindsay Herbert Bayliss, 23, single, of the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment, Enoggera. Yesterday, police learned that Bayliss knocked on the door of Lieutenant Maurice Sheehan, at Enoggera Army Camp, and asked to see Sheehan's Owen gun, which was on issue to him.

Bayliss and Sheehan had some discussion about the weapon. Police said that Bayliss then snapped a fully-loaded magazine on to the gun, stepped on to the veranda, and shot himself in a burst of fire. Of eight nine millimetre bullets fired, three struck Bayliss in the head. Bayliss' home was at Orange (N.S.W.). A note found in his room said his own sub-machine gun was in store, and he intended to take one from somebody who was "unsuspecting".'

With copy of newspaper article.