They felt the fear – and did it anyway

BOOKS, like people, come in all shapes and sizes, and this one is a real Eric Pickles of a volume. Nick Metcalfe is a former career soldier who served for many years in Northern Ireland, won the Queen’s Gallantry Medal (QGM) in 1989 and has now written an exhaustive history of the award.

At 852 pages of small type in large format, to write it must have been a labour of love. Merely to lift it represents physical risk.

But this is an interesting and valuable work. The QGM came into being in the midSeventies, as a third-tier award for bravery below the George Cross and George Medal.

It’s for civilians and military personnel ‘not directly in action with an enemy’, and is given ‘for exemplary bravery’.

So far 1,044 men and women have won it. As Metcalfe’s researches show, for each there’s a story to tell.

The first QGMs went to a couple of helicopter pilots who rescued a man in stormy waters off the coast of Queensland.

On the same day a security guard who tackled armed robbers in Enfield, North London, was honoured, as were three men who helped foil the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne on The Mall in 1974.

One was her chauffeur, who was shot in the chest; another was a journalist, who happened to be in a passing cab, stopped and intervened and was also shot in the chest.

In 1975, seven Queensland policemen rescued guests from a hotel fire in Brisbane. Each received the QGM. ‘When I was crawling in black, plastic- filled smoke, I genuinely thought I was going to die,’ says one. ‘Training did not take over because I’d had none — it was just the terrified calls for help that motivated me to carry on.’

No one died or was seriously injured.

Metcalfe i ncludes several case studies taken from first-person testimonies which are as gripping as thrillers.

In 1979, two Navy divers aged 17 and 18 were honoured after helping to rescue the crew of a ship that had sunk in freezing, stormy seas near Port St Vincent. Their captain’s comment summed up the stiff-upper-lipness of the operation.

‘People say you must all be very brave. Like most servicemen I shrug this off and say we had a job to do, you didn’t question it, you just did what you could and to the best of your ability.’

There are airline pilots who persuaded hijackers to surrender, members of the public who rescued people from fires.

Bomb disposal experts feature prominently, as does the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Eight QGMs went to people involved in the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster of 1988. Quite a few are still subject to the Official Secrets Act, and might yet be for a while.

A handful of posthumous recipients include PC Keith Blakelock, killed during the Broadwater Farm riot in 1985.

Designed as a work of reference and weighing more than some small cars, at £55 this volume is a specialist purchase.

But these tales of uncommon courage, of people who had to do what they did, are inspiring, and deserve a wider audience.

‘People say you must be very brave. Like most servicemen I shrug this off. We had a job to do’