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[Yvonne]

Australian Victoria Cross expected to top $749,000
5:00AM Saturday May 24, 2008

A Victoria Cross awarded to an Australian digger on the bloody World War I battlefields of France will be the centrepiece of a $5 million auction next week.

The VC is expected to fetch up to A$600,000 ($749,250) when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby's Connoisseur's Autumn Collection.

The medal, the Commonwealth's highest military honour, was the last to be bestowed on an Australian soldier during World War I. Lieutenant George Mawby Ingram was awarded the VC for "most conspicuous bravery and initiative" in the battle of Montbrehain on the Western Front, on October 5, 1918, just weeks before the end of the war.

On the day Montbrehain fell, Ingram led his battalion to capture nine enemy positions, killing 42 soldiers, and single-handedly capturing a garrison of 30 men.

Sotheby's head of decorative arts Jennifer Gibson said after almost a century in the Ingram family, the medal was set to be passed on.

"They are fairly rare, most of the families who sell them want them to go to one of the Australian institutions ... which I think is the place for them," Ms Gibson said.


The medal will be on public display for three days from today, before the auction on May 27. More than 600 items will be sold during the two-day auction, which is expected to fetch about $5 million.

-AAP
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10512140
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