THE wartime medals of SAS hero Reg Seekings have been sold for £60,000 - twice the estimated sale price. Described as one of the most important gallantry groups from the last war to ever come up for auction , the 11 Second World War medals have been boug

THE wartime medals of SAS hero Reg Seekings have been sold for £60,000 - twice the estimated sale price.

Described as "one of the most important gallantry groups from the last war to ever come up for auction", the 11 Second World War medals have been bought by a private UK collector.

They included the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Military Medal awarded to Mr Seekings during a distinguished military career which included founding the Special Air Service and being among the first to parachute in during the Normandy Landings.

The medals along with service documents and photographs were part of a collection held by Ron Penhall who acquired them directly from Mr Seekings, who lived in Stuntney.

They were sold on Friday at a London auction house but the buyer asked for his details not to be released.

David Erskine-Hill from auctioneers Dix Noonan and Webb said after the sale: "This is a great result. It was a super set of medals. If ever there were a group of medals which had a sign post on it saying 'follow me' this was it.

"It was one of the most important gallantry groups from the last war ever to come up for auction. The medals have gone into a private collection in the UK and will probably resurface again at some later stage."

Born Albert Reginald Seekings in Stuntney in 1920, he went from farm-hand at 14 to squadron sergeant major in one of the world's toughest regiments, the Special Air Service.

Mr Seekings' wartime work was top secret but he was one of the first Allied servicemen through the gates of the Belsen concentration camp.

As a member of the Cambridgeshire Regiment he saw action in the Middle East in 1940 before being one of the first to volunteer for the SAS.

After being parachuted into the Egyptian desert, Mr Seekings risked death almost daily, taking part in daring raids on enemy airfields, destroying numerous aircraft and acting as his commanding officer's semi-official bodyguard.

On his return to Cambridgeshire, he became landlord of the Rifleman Arms in Ely before he and his wife moved to what was then southern Rhodesia in the 1950s to take up farming.

It was here, as an inspector of Marlborough Police Field Reserve, that he helped to establish the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit in the 1960s. He died in 1999.