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80 years ago

M

MartinF

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Charles Upham won a VC (his first). Upham was a boyhood hero of mine and featured in a book that I was given as a birthday present ”The Boys Book of VC Heroes”.

When journalists talk of footballing or cricketing heroes, I cringe; Upham was a proper hero - see here if you don’t know his story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham
 
I haven’t come across him before, that really is something quite incredible. I enjoy reading the obituary section in the back of the Telegraph, the lives of some of the people that went through the war were just unbelievable, the hardships they faced on a day to day basis, was it the way they were brought up? Not as much sentimentality in those days, not so far away from Victorian times when children often weren’t named or christened until they were older.
But also when you look at our Armed Forces now they are just as brave in my opinion, to go out on patrol day after day when you never know if the Next step is going to take your leg off takes some guts.
 
We had a local DLI museum where lots of medals were on display including a few VC's. The local authority closed it and gave the medals to the university. I recently found out that some one had the bright idea to replace the ribbons on the medals with new ones. Their ignorance and stupidity knows no bounds
 
Up until covid put a halt to the d-day commemorations around here I had the honour and pleasure of speaking to a number of veterans, mainly paras, who were dropped and fought around here. I do so hope that there will be enough of them still around to make the journey here when covid restrictions allow next year.

Gordon Newton, now sadly passed, was once such. Having come down on D-day and fought through the whole normandy campaign without a drop of blood spilt on french soil until he caught his leg on the tour bus a few years back. My wife and the pleasure of accompanying him to hospital when he as treated like a king by all who met him.
 
Some years ago I went to a military 'doo' at Larkhill Camp and apart from the active demos (howitzers firing across Salisbury Plain, short take off and landing by a Hercules, tanks rumbling around shooting off live rounds etc; the usual stuff), there was also a static display.

On one forlorn looking table there were a couple of very bored looking chaps from DES Donnington, Telford who were doing very little 'business' as all the squadies and assembled 'brass' were far more interested in the displays of weaponry on show. On their stand was a rather obscure looking lump of dull metal, a couple of handouts of info and a display case, securely bolted that contained a blank VC.

I was a little intrigued and strolled over to have a natter with them. It transpires that the rather dull and obscure lump of metal was the only remaining cascobel captured from a Russian gun during the Crimean War and from it ALL the VC's are cast by a jeweller in London (with some difficulty, as the metal is full of imperfections). The VC's in stock (around 20) are kept in a secure vault at DES Donnington and have, believe or not, relatively little value.

However, once a medal is won and the recipients details are engraved on it, the value increases exponentially.

I asked the chaps what would happen when the cascobel was all used and they just grinned. I then asked if I could pick it up for SWIMBO to take a pic to which they replied....'yeah mate, no problem; just don't drop the bloody thing'

Somewhere upstairs, buried in a box file, I still have the pic - Rob
 
Nice story Rob. Our county has millions of pounds worth of artifacts being stored in an old fag factory. Very sad state of affairs
 
wallace":1sfapbvy said:
We had a local DLI museum where lots of medals were on display including a few VC's. The local authority closed it and gave the medals to the university. I recently found out that some one had the bright idea to replace the ribbons on the medals with new ones. Their ignorance and stupidity knows no bounds
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Well let’s just hope that they’ve kept the old ribbons and put new ones on to stop the old ones getting sun damaged, but I wouldn’t bet on it!
 
Probably some students project and thought they would look better all new looking. The sad thing is they were seen by 3Ok people a year in the museum now they've been viewed 4O times by the public in 5 years. Hopefully things will change since labour do not control the council anymore.
 
Andyp":1embvl9f said:
Up until covid put a halt to the d-day commemorations around here I had the honour and pleasure of speaking to a number of veterans, mainly paras, who were dropped and fought around here. I do so hope that there will be enough of them still around to make the journey here when covid restrictions allow next year.

Gordon Newton, now sadly passed, was once such. Having come down on D-day and fought through the whole normandy campaign without a drop of blood spilt on french soil until he caught his leg on the tour bus a few years back. My wife and the pleasure of accompanying him to hospital when he as treated like a king by all who met him.
Click to expand...

That reminds me of a night in a pub in Weston on the Green many years ago. Some baby paras were taking the mickey out of an old guy cause he's said they weren't anything special at having 20 jumps under their belt as he had jumped 5 times. They stopped taking the P when he explained his 5 jumps were: 1st in basic training, 2nd D Day, 3rd Market Garden and 4 Suez.
 
droogs":p6i37283 said:
That reminds me of a night in a pub in Weston on the Green many years ago. Some baby paras were taking the mickey out of an old guy cause he's said they weren't anything special at having 20 jumps under their belt as he had jumped 5 times. They stopped taking the P when he explained his 5 jumps were: 1st in basic training, 2nd D Day, 3rd Market Garden and 4 Suez.
Click to expand...

I hope they bought his beers for the rest of the night.
 
One thing about Upham was that he absolutely despised attention of any kind and was an incredibly unassuming and humble man by all accounts.

You can see in this old program "This is Your Life: Charles Upham" just how uncomfortable he is being in the limelight:

[youtubessl]UzfCc28zPCQ[/youtubessl]

An incredible individual, there's a lot of absolutely unbelievable actions in his story, but this one always sticks out to me as being quite funny:

"When it became urgently necessary to take information to advance units which had become separated, Upham took a Jeep on which a captured German machine-gun was mounted and drove it through the enemy position.

At one point the vehicle became bogged down in the sand, so Upham coolly ordered some nearby Italian soldiers to push it free. Though they were somewhat surprised to be given an order by one of the enemy, Upham's expression left them in no doubt that he should be obeyed."
 
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