Theodore Veale 1892–1980

The remarkable heroism of a soldier from Devon saw him receive our highest award for military achievement – the Victoria Cross. Simon shares his story from the pages of the London Gazette

to rest. The corporal stood up like on his knees and we saw five Germans pop up out of the grass about 100 yards away. We had to go over a bit of a bridge, and they shot the corporal through the head… I pulled the wounded officer into a hole and left him comfortable, and went back. Then I sent a team out to cover any of the Germans that might try to fire at Savill, and tracked out to him myself again with water.” Unusually, neither the incident in which Savill was rescued, nor the award of the VC was recorded in the War Diary. Indeed, Veale only discovered the award when he read about it in a newspaper during a quiet moment in the trenches.

The medal can be seen at The Keep Military Museum in Dorchester, Dorset. At press time The Keep is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays: keepmilitarymuseum.org.

The National Archives (TNA; nationalarchives. gov.uk) at Kew has a set of ‘Recommendations for Honours and Awards for Gallant and Distinguished Service’ (series WO373). Very few survive before 1943. They are largely for the Army and can be downloaded from TNA’s website via bit.ly/tnarecommendations. TNA also has many unindexed files of citations for non-immediate awards for the Royal Air Force. The very helpful Air Historical Branch in Ruislip, Middlesex, keeps an index ( raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/ units/air-historical-branch).

For awards of the MM there is a card index on thegenealogist.co.uk as well as the entry in the London Gazette. Citations for awards of the DCM for the First