’Going in with bayonets’ hero’s gongs sell

BRAVERY Briggs

THE medals of a Second World War paratrooper captured after telling a superior officer he was “going in with bayonets and grenades” are going on sale.

Captain Bernard Briggs, 1st Parachute Brigade, was at Arnhem Bridge in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in 1944.

The action was immortalised in the epic 1977 war film A Bridge Too Far. Told he may withdraw if his position was “untenable”, Capt Briggs instead replied: “I am now going in with bayonets and grenades.”

Capt Briggs, commissioned in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1940, was one of 6,000 captured. He died in 1989 aged 75.

His Military Cross and other medals are due to be sold by London-based auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb on July 16.