Monty meets Victoria Cross hero of WWI
IT’S a shame we do not have the exact date that this photograph was taken but we believe it was in the 1960s. It shows Field Marshal Lord Montgomery of Alamein shaking hands with a fellow veteran of the First World War. The man proudly wearing his medals is Captain Robert Phillips VC.
Bob Phillips was born in Hill Top, West Bromwich in 1895. His father, Alfred Phillips, was a roll turner at Charles Akrill and Co in Golds Green. Young Bob attended St James’s National Elementary School, Hill Top, then Hill Top Council School and the King Edward VI Grammar School in Aston. After school he joined the Inland Revenue service.
On March 17, 1914, Phillips enlisted in the 1/15 Company of the London Regiment but on December 3, 1914, he was commissioned in the 9/13 Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire regiment, holding the rank of Temporary 2nd Lieutenant. He went on to serve in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia.
Robert Phillips was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on January 25, 1917. After his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elers Delaval Henderson lay in open ground, having been mortally wounded leading a counter attack on the enemy near Kut, Mesopotamia, Lieutenant Phillips went out under heavy and concentrated fire to his aid. With the assistance Corporal Scott, who later received the Distinguished Conduct Medal, he succeeded in bringing his commander back to the safety of their own lines.
Robert Phillips was mentioned in dispatches a further two times before the end of the war.
After the war Phillips returned to the civil service and married in 1920. After retirement he settled in Cornwall and died in 1968. There is a road in Hill Top named in his honour and a blue plaque on his childhood home.