The bar itself is period correct, and not a modern production. It is also perfectly added to the uniform implying that someone very knowledgeable added it. With this in my mind, it rules out the chances of this being added by a collector after the fact. Namely due to the first medal, a Military Medal for gallantry, which any collector experienced enough to assemble such an accurate uniform would also know is an award only awarded to enlisted soldiers and not officers (ie. a Lieutenant). So, it seems very odd to me that someone who is very meticulously building a uniform would include a medal that is extremely unlikely to be used by an officer, unless they are recreating a specific person’s tunic, which I find unlikely.

So now, using the medals, we can start checking against possible candidates. The Military Medal is the key to the whole procedure. Since it is so rare for an officer to have this medal, I was able to run it through the DVA’s nominal roll for WW2 and pull only about 100 lieutenants and captains who received the award. I then went through and eliminated anyone who discharged prior to June 1946, making it unlikely that they served in BCOF.  After this I was left with about 20 possible candidates. I then compared these names to the BCOF nominal roll provided in the book ‘Disarming the Menace’ by Neil C. Smith. This left me with only two possible matches.

The first of these was Lieutenant Colin Ernest Furgerson. Initially he seemed to be a good match but was quickly eliminated when it was discovered that he served in North Africa at the start of the war. The Africa Star medal, which he would’ve been awarded by 1944, was missing from the rack. That left us with Lieutenant Ernest Walter Marshall, who fits all the correct criteria and who is an appropriate size range for the tunic.

One last, and admittedly small detail, is the pressing of the collar into the opened position. Although this was by no means exclussively a BCOF practice, it was extremely common for the men in Japan to iron their collars open so to wear the service dress tunic with a shirt and tie underneath. The fact this has been done would suggest that this was worn during down time and off duty, as when on duty the collar would need to be fastened and the creases from ironing would be visible. 

Update:

In September 2025, the 1950’s battledress uniform was sold at an auction run by J B Military Antiques and was named and attributed to Marshall. Unfortunately, the uniform could not be secured. However, through the listing measurements and the tags on the uniform, I was able to determine that these attributed pieces were in fact the same size as the BCOF uniform above. This is of huge significance since the sizing was a concern, given that in photographs, Marshall does appear to be tall and stocky. In my opinion, this further reinforces the likelihood of the BCOF tunic belonging to him.

Marshall's SAS Battle Dress

This uniform was the attributed lot sold by J B Military Antiques. All photos are owned by J B Military Antiques and were taken from the September 2025 catalogue.