Under fire
John Norwood was from an old yeoman family from Stilstead in East Peckham, though he was born in Beckenham where his father was a merchant.
He earned his Victoria Cross during action in the Second Boer War in South Africa in 1899.
Norwood had been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 5th Dragoon Guards, which were commanded by Lt Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, who later became famous as the founder of the Boy Scout movement.
Norwood was with the British force at Ladysmith when the Afrikaners attacked and laid siege to the city.
There were a serious of small skirmishes and in one of these Norwood was with a small cavalry patrol who unexpectedly came upon a large force of Boers entrenched on a ridge and came under heavy fire.
The cavalry retreated, but one man was hit and knocked of his horse. Norwood alone turned around and rode back towards the enemy to help the fallen man.
Dismounting, he carried his comrade on his back to safety, while leading his horse, all the time under fire.
For this he was awarded the VC.
Norwood stayed in the Army until 1911, when he retired at the rank of captain. When the First World War started, he rejoined and was with the Old Contemptibles – the first British troops to arrive in France.
His astonishing good fortune in not being hit in South Africa did not last and he was killed at the battle of Marne just a month later.
He is buried at Sablonnnieres in France, but St Michael’s Church in East Peckham has a brass plaque dedicated to him and to a cousin, John Norton Norward, who also died in France. It notes they were “kinsmen who constituted the sixth generation of the yeoman family of Norwood, sometime of Stilstead in this Parish.”