Cold, calculated bravery

Max Hastings on an extraordinary act of courage that earned a Coldstream officer the Victoria Cross 60 years ago this month Amemorable little event took place at the Imperial War Museum last week. General Sir Michael Rose, Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, arranged a presentation to honour the 60th anniversary of the award of a VC to a member of the regiment named Ian Liddell.

I had never heard of Liddell, but Michael Rose is an old friend, and I love to learn more about warriors. One by one, a succession of elderly men who had served with the Coldstream in April 1945 stood up and related their memories of the action for which Liddell was decorated. The longer the audience listened, the more fascinated and moved did we become by a story which deserves a wider audience than our group at the IWM.

To offer a little perspective: the award of decorations, even Victoria Crosses, is an arbitrary business. The old cliché is profoundly true, that the only man who knows what a medal is worth is he who won it. By no means all winners of ‘gongs’ commanded the admiration of comrades at the time, or deserve the respect of posterity.

The tale we heard at the IWM last week, however, is remarkable by any measure. One day towards the end of the second world war, an apparently unexceptional young man, pursuing what he perceived as his duty to his comrades and country, rather than driven by any lust for glory, performed a feat which makes one gasp.

Ian Liddell, scion of a China trading family, was born in Shanghai in 1920, brought up in Gloucestershire and educated at Harrow, where he acquired a reputation for practical jokes. He possessed the usual enthusiasms of his time and class for dogs and guns, together with a less predictable passion for music.

In September 1939 he enlisted as a private in the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry, and was thereafter commissioned into the Coldstream. He spent most of 1941 in a socially delicate but militarily unpromising role as a member of the ‘Coates Mission’, charged with guarding the royal family amid the threat of invasion. He seems to have become very popular with his charges, not least for his zest for organising entertainments.

A contemporary described Liddell ringing his mother to ask if she had any cardboard eggs, of the Easter variety. Why? she demanded. ‘Because I’m playing a chicken in the pantomime next week, and I want to lay eggs in the laps of the King and Queen and the Princesses,’ he responded without embarrassment. His performance apparently received rave reviews.

The adjective which two fellow officers use of Liddell is ‘simple’. This is not, of course, intended to convey stupidity, but mere straightforwardness. Yet it does not seem ungenerous to speculate that, if the young soldier had lived on into peacetime, he would have remained much beloved in his own circle, but unlikely to set the world ablaze. Instead, on 3 April 1945, he found himself a temporary captain commanding a company of 5th Coldstreams approaching the river Ems in north Germany. Word suddenly reached them that, among all the bridges destroyed by the retreating enemy, a lone crossing survived, in the Coldstreams’ path. If this could be seized intact, the advance of Guards Armoured Division would be dramatically hastened.

Liddell and his platoon commanders contemplated the problem through field glasses from a cottage overlooking the waterway. On the other side, the Germans were strongly dug in. The crossing itself was deserted, but on the near side stood a big barricade. The British group discussed options. They knew the bridge was wired for demolition — indeed, they could see the charges. If an attempt was made to rush forward with either tanks or infantry, the Germans would obviously blow it in their faces.

Liddell declared that there was only one possibility. A single man might be able to get on to the bridge under covering fire, and disable the charges. He said that he would do the job himself, and promptly set about making arrangements.

Herein lies a part of the story which caught the imagination of all of us listening at the IWM. Liddell had two hours between conceiving this terrifying proposal and executing it. Many men can be suddenly brave, for a few moments of madness in the heat of battle. But it seems remarkable that this young soldier, in the last weeks of a war which everyone knew was almost won, cheerfully undertook such a task which — like any act deserving of a VC — was overwhelmingly likely to result in his own death. At that period a host of sensible Allied soldiers were doing their best to behave in a way that would enable them to survive and enjoy victory.

Liddell at last ran forward to the barricade in a clammy drizzle, under heavy and effective covering fire from Coldstream Shermans, deployed on a slight rise above the river. His own unit had massed its mortars to provide a smoke screen, which indeed masked his dash from many of the enemy. It was one of those mornings when, in the words of an eye-witness, ‘a series of miracles happened’.

Clambering over the German barricade, Liddell dropped his sten gun. He ran towards the far bank encumbered only by a pair of wire-cutters borrowed from one of his platoon commanders, who begged him to take special care of them, because his father had carried them in the first world war.

While several hundred British eyes watched in suspense and disbelief, Liddell made his dash amid a hail of German fire, cut two sets of wires, then saw further charges placed under the bridge. He climbed down, cut these wires too, and ascended again to meet a German only a few feet away, shooting at him. Unarmed, the only response Liddell could make was to hurl his wirecutters. These hit the German in the face, causing him to fall back into his trench.

Liddell waved forward his company. A Sherman smashed through the barricade, and within a few minutes Coldstream tanks and infantrymen were mopping up the Germans on the eastern shore, taking some 60 prisoners and killing as many more. Only one British soldier was killed in the whole action.

Just 18 days later, the Coldstream officer was hit by a chance bullet. He died without regaining consciousness, and without knowing that he had been awarded a Victoria Cross, which was gazetted a month after the war ended.

Discussing his story with Michael Rose last week, we agreed that there are several varieties of what the world calls ‘heroes’. Some are extreme exhibitionists. Others, however — and surely the most deserving of our admiration — simply possess a remarkable vision of duty. Of these, Ian Liddell seems a notable exemplar. He did what he did because he thought he should.

Approaching the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war, it felt good and right to recall this tiny saga — it receives just two lines in the monumental official history of the campaign — at last week’s presentation. Such people as Ian Liddell are few in number, but every army needs a handful in order to prevail. It is not sententious, I hope, to suggest that we are here today only because such men as he were willing not to be.