Normandy veteran handed France’s highest honour
‘I AM OVERWHELMED’ - 95-YEAR-OLD WOUNDED IN LIBERATION FIGHT
A SECOND World War veteran who survived being shot in the chest and a close scrape with a German soldier has been decorated with the Legion D’Honneur medal.
Gordon Bennett, 95, of Hinckley, was given the special accolade, the highest French order of merit, for his efforts fighting in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Age UK Leicestershire & Rutland Joining Forces project worked with Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council to arrange for Gordon to receive his medal.
He said: “I am totally overwhelmed with this wonderful honour and would like to thank you all for what you have done for me.”
Gordon was born in London Road, Hinckley, on January 26, 1926.
On leaving school in Burbage, he initially trained as a butcher but later became an apprentice in the hosiery industry.
He remembers being at the Brown Horse pub with his dad when they heard the radio announcement that Britain was at war with Germany.
In February 1944, he was called up by the Leicestershire Regiment, undergoing tough infantry training at Budbrooke Barracks, in Leamington Spa, and then around the North East, until D-Day in June of that year.
His unit was ordered to move down to the New Forest and set up camp under canvas, to be ready to reinforce the first wave of soldiers sent into northern France, who were suffering heavy casualties.
The call soon came and after a Channel crossing by landing ship the reinforcements disembarked at Arromanches and joined with the other regiments.
Gordon linked up with the Leicestershire Regiment 1st Battalion and his patrol was tasked with seizing a small bridge just outside the port of Le Havre.
One night, they reached the objective having unknowingly crossed a minefield.
A large house loomed up and Gordon, the patrol’s gunner, moved into the lee of it armed with his Bren machine gun.
A German soldier walked out of the house and began to relieve himself nearby, prompting Gordon to jump up and point the gun barrel at his chest.
The soldier raised his hands in surrender. He was quickly persuaded to lead the patrol through the house and into the cellar, where a large group of beleaguered Axis soldiers, who had been bombed and shelled for days, also laid down their weapons and surrendered.
One is said to have called out “Don’t shoot me, my mother is Scottish”.
Gordon’s battalion moved into Belgium and saw further action, with a close friend of his killed by a stray shell.
It was here that he also suffered a major injury. It came when the battalion had stopped for a meal, and he set up his gun on a fixed line and got out his mess tin, the least-camouflaged part of a soldier’s kit.
A sniper caught sight of it from some 300 yards away and shot at him, with the bullet ricocheting from the mess tin and across his chest.
He was evacuated to an American military hospital and then on to a British one near Antwerp.
He returned to the front lines once recovered, and while he was marching through Nijmegen in the Netherlands, a lone Messerschmitt 109 descended for a strafing run down the same street.
Surviving this, he moved on to driving duties and began the dangerous work of supplying the front line with rations and ammunition until the War in Europe ceased, in May 1945.
He later served as an Army driver in Palestine, returning to Hinckley in 1947.
He went on to marry Barbara, to whom he was married for 70 years.
The veteran was joined by his son, grandson and great-grandson as he received his Legion D’Honneur medal.
The ceremony included a Vera Lynn tribute from singer Lorrie Brown.