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Pte JG Beharry VC meets Lt Col ECT Wilson VC, the only two living
holders of the Victoria Cross from the Princess of Wales' Royal
Regiment, in MOD Main Building, Whitehall, 18th March 2005
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Lieutenant Colonel Eric Charles Twelves Wilson VC
Published
Friday 18th March 2005
Lieutenant Colonel Wilson VC
is the only other living Victoria Cross
holder from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR).
He was born at Sandown, Isle of Wight, on 2nd October 1912, the son of Rev.
Cyril Charles Clissold Wilson, he was educated at Marlborough and Sandhurst.
Lieutenant Colonel Wilson VC was
commissioned into The East Surrey Regiment (now part of the PWRR) on 2nd
February 1933, he was seconded to The King’s African Rifles in 1937 and then
to The Somaliland Camel Corps in 1939. He retired from the Army in 1949 with
the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and became a colonial administrator in
Tanganika before retiring to Dorset.
It was whilst serving with The
Somaliland Camel Corps in 1940, as an acting Captain aged 27, that he won
his VC. The award was cited posthumously in the London Gazette on 14 October
1940. Three days later, however, news was received that he had been taken
prisoner and he was later freed. He was decorated with his Victoria Cross by
King George VI at Buckingham Palace in July 1942.
His Citation reads:
“For most conspicuous
gallantry on active service in Somaliland. Captain Wilson was in command
of machinegun posts manned by Somali soldiers in the key position of
Observation Hill, a defended post in the defensive organisation of the
Tug Argan Gap in British Somaliland.
“The enemy attacked
Observation Hill on 11th August 1940. Captain Wilson and Somali gunners
under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on the enemy
troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range. He inflicted
such heavy casualties that the enemy, determined to put his guns out of
action, brought up a pack battery to within seven hundred yards, and
scored two direct hits through the loopholes of his defences which,
bursting within the post, wounded Captain Wilson severely in the right
shoulder and in the left eye, several of his team also being wounded.
His guns were blown off their stands but he repaired and replaced them
and, regardless of his wounds, carried on, while his Somali sergeant was
killed beside him.
“On 12th and 14th August,
the enemy again concentrated field artillery fire on Captain Wilson’s
guns, but he continued, with his wounds untended, to man them. On 15th
August two of his machine-gun posts were blown to pieces, yet Captain
Wilson, now suffering from malaria in addition to his wounds, still kept
his own post in action. The enemy finally over-ran the post at 5pm on
the 15th August when Captain Wilson, fighting to the last, was killed”.
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