Donation of a set of medals to the National War Museum

These medals pertained to Lieutenant Colonel Walter Fava, who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the inter-war Period, Second World War and post-war.

The medal presentation ceremony was held at the Auberge d’Italie. The set of medals were presented by Alistair Redler, on behalf of Lieutenat-Colonel Fava’s family, to the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, the Environment and Culture, Dr Mario de Marco.

Also in attendance were the curators of the National War Museum, which were entrusted with the safekeeping of the medals that will be conserved and exhibited together with other medals within the Memorial Section at the National War Museum in Valletta.

Walter Felix Luke Fava MD joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as a Lieutenant in 1933, obtaining the rank of Captain a year later. In 1936, after he married his wife Victoria Ethel Zammit Tabona, he was posted in India. At the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, he was posted back to the United Kingdom. During the war Walter Fava commanded various Field Dressing Stations and Casualty Clearing Stations in North Africa and later in Italy and Austria.

In 1947 Major Fava was posted to the British Military Hospital at Mtarfa.

By now, he had reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and in 1949, he was posted to the British Military Hospitals in Germany, Singapore and Cyprus and then back to the UK, where he retired in October 1966 at the age of 60. He died at the Cambridge military hospital in Aldershot on 5 February 1973 and is buried in the Roman Catholic section of the cemetery in Fleet, Hampshire.