South Yorkshire Times January 24, 1959
Dearne Technician is Awarded the B.E.M.
Has Recently Received the Polar Medal
Chief Technician Ronald Evans, whose parents live at 54, Hope Avenue, Goldthorpe, has been awarded the B.E.M. for his services to the Royal Air Force.
Stationed at R.A.F., Henlow, Chief Technician Evans spent 13 months at the Halley Base in the Antarctic during 1957 and 1958 and was recently decorated with the Polar Medal by the Queen at an Investiture at Buckingham Palace. Fewer than 100 persons hold the medal, an Admiralty decoration for which one of the qualifications is that the recipient must have spent a complete winter inside the Arctic or Antarctic Circles. Four of the party at Halley Bay were awarded the decoration.
Congratulations
In a letter of congratulations from Headquarters, Home Command, Air Marshal Sir Douglas Macfayden, C.B.E., told Chief Technician Evans that the B.E.M. had been awarded to him In recognition of his services to the Royal Air Force.
During the last war Chief Technician Evans, a former Wath Grammar School student was attached to the Fleet Air Arm and saw service in the Middle East, the Far East, the U.S. and Canada.
He was selected for duty in the Antarctic in 1956 when the Royal Society asked the R.A.F. to provide a radio engineer who could also operate a transmitter. He sailed with the remainder of the party in the Magga Dan in November, 1956, and arrived in Halley Bay more than three months later. There, the base was built and the 20 strong group, under the command of Col, Smart R. A. M.C. took scientific observations in connection with the International Geophysical Year project.
Chief Technician Evans, who maintained the radio equipment, transmitted about three quarters of the communications from the base to the outside world. He returned to England about a year ago.