Engraved fountain pen : Lieutenant R W Lister, 2/1 Australian Ordnance Stores Company

Gilded medal fountain pen with screw top lid and pull out arm to fill the internal rubber ink bladder. The lid has a slide to allow the pen to be held in a breast pocket. The pen and lid are decorated with fine machine engraved lines. The body of the pen is impressed with the manufacturer's name 'ONOTO' and engraved 'R. LISTER C.H.T. PTY LTD 11.1.40'.

VX7502 Lieutenant Ronald Walter Lister served with 2/1 Australian Ordnance Store Company. Born in 1918, he had served with the militia before the Second World War, and was working as an etcher and lithographer for CHT Pty Ltd in Melbourne before he enlisted in the AIF, on 24 November 1939. Lister's workmates presented him with this pen before he sailed with his unit for service in Palestine. In 1941 Lister took part in the Greece and Crete campaign and was captured by the Germans on Crete, on 1 June 1941. Flown by the Germans to Athens, and then transferred to Salonika, Lister was then sent to Oflag X/C at Lubeck on the Baltic Sea, arriving there on 29 July. The following day his fountain pen was confiscated by the Germans who issued him with a receipt for it. The pen was returned to him at the end of the war. On 9 October 1941 Lister was transferred to Oflag VIB at Dossel uber Warburg, and in summer 1942 to Oflag VIIB at Eichstatt, where he remained for the rest of the war. In April 1945 he was briefly moved to Stalag VIIA at Moosburg before being liberated by American forces on 29 April. Lister was discharged in Australia on 24 April 1946.