Sold with a quantity of original documentation and a rare wartime "Chindit" shoulder-flash, the former including a detailed newspaper cutting outlining the recipient's career and services with Wingate in Burma, official correspondence regarding his Campaign Medals, two portrait photographs and a Membership Certificate for the Over-Seas League.

Captain Ainslie John Turner was born in South Africa in November 1917 and educated at Hilton College in Natal. Enlisting in 1941, he was seconded for service in the Imperial Forces and underwent basic training in the U.K. prior to joining the Madras Sappers and Miners as an Officer Cadet in early 1942. Subsequently commissioned into the Bombay Sappers and Miners as a 2nd Lieutenant in August of the latter year, Turner found himself detached as a Platoon Commander to a Field Company of the Royal Engineers, which appointment led to his secondment to Wingate's famous "Chindits": 'Then he underwent secret training for jungle warfare and at the end of it he went in by air ... [It] was the beginning of months of weary, tough living' (The Natal Daily News refers). The same newspaper article continues:

'"The men with him were amazing," said Captain Turner. "Most of them were English lads who, it might be, had never walked on anything but pavements. After a brief training in jungle warfare, they settled down as to the manor born, without difficulty and without grousing. They were magnificent ... The Tommy is just waiting for the moment to get the Japanese in the open because he knows full well he is going to blot him out ... He gave him a good smashing in the jungle [with the "Chindits"] and came out on top and now would like to catch him in the open and give him a good hiding."'

Turner finished the War as a Captain employed in Airfield and Road Construction Units, R.E. and returned to his home at Pietermaritzburg in Natal in early 1946.