Rewarded for a Minefield Rescue

(An article submitted by my father Frank Robert North, then a corporal and a nursing orderly, serving in the No.2806 Field Squadron R.A.F. Regiment)
Pauline Lovell

While at Lympne and serving in the sick quarters on 27th August 1943, we received a call that some soldiers had been blown up in one of our minefields by the Hythe canal which was about a mile away. Corporal Golding and I took an ambulance as far as we could get and continued on foot with a stretcher.

As we approached the canal, we saw a forearm on our side, but on the other side, behind barbed wire, a group of soldiers were clustered around a man lying on the edge of a crater. The Hythe canal had been built for defensive purposes against a French invasion in Napoleonic times. At Hythe it is very deep indeed but here it was about four and a half feet deep. However, we had to get through it, so in we went. It had a mud bottom and we sank in it nearly up to our necks but propelled by the necessity to get morphia to the man, we made it. The knowledge that the soldiers also made it helped.

We got through the barbed wire and found that a man was unconscious so that there was no need for morphia. His condition did not merit first aid so we gently put him on the stretcher and carried him back, assisted by the soldiers, the way we had come. Although I naturally kept my eyes open, I do not think that I feared treading on a second mine. Meanwhile the driver had come over with a second stretcher and we used this for a less injured man. We got them back to sick quarters where they were seen by the M.O. and sent straight to hospital where sadly, the major casualty died that night. Someone had put the forearm on to the ambulance so we sent that for disposal. Three other men had been blown to pieces when someone stepped on the mine, and others had minor injuries.

International law decrees that minefields must be marked and I saw many so marked in France, but it must have been thought that nobody would approach it through a canal. On the other hand, the Officer in charge of our group thought that the long grass and barbed wire should have warned the officer of the patrol that it was a minefield. Next morning, I had to accompany this Officer (a Lieutenant Colonel) to the scene and relate to him what had happened, although the canal had been drained by then. I visited the scene many years later and found that it was just a trickle. I was told that the Army was very pleased with our efforts and had recommended us for an award.

We moved into 1944.

On about the fifteenth of January, it was gazetted that the three of us who had taken part in the minefield incident at Lympne had all been awarded the George Medal. I have always hoped that my pride has been tempered with humility. Apart from the fact that any other medic or probably any other person at all would have done likewise in the circumstances, the G.M. was too high. The B.E.M. would, in my opinion, have been more appropriate. I was to repeat the exercise in France and none of my unit knew anything about it. I understand that it was standard practice in the Russian army, that when a minefield was encountered, a first section would go in, be blown up and the rest would follow, but to my surprise one of my friends has since told me that there was an occasion when his unit, having no detectors, he was ordered to lead a section through a minefield.

However, the immediate outcome was that Lieutenant Colonel Young got the R.A.F. band down, turned out eight squadrons of the R.A.F.R. on parade (each of some 200 men) and having said what a credit I was to my parents, gave me my ribbon with the comment that someone more important would give me my medal.

George VI gave me my medal at Buckingham Palace in the Bow Room on 10th December 1946. Grace, my wife, Pauline my daughter and my mother accompanied me and watched the presentation.

On Sunday 10th July 2005 I again passed through the Bow Room on my way into the gardens of Buckingham Palace with Pauline. I had been invited as a veteran to attend the lunch given by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II.

As I write, I am truly grateful for my 91 years and all that I have been able to achieve in them; but I also spare many thoughts for those who did not survive the war years.

ãFrank North 2005

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