Beyond Brave

This Remembrance Day we look at some unusual acts of wartime heroism.

When we think of wartime heroism, we picture soldiers charging machine-gun nests or holding a bridge against impossible odds. Yet some of the most remarkable acts of British military courage have come in distinctly unusual forms. These stories reveal a creativity and audacity that defy conventional expectations of battlefield valour.

The Escape Artist

Captain Herbert Cecil Buck of the 1st SAS was captured in North Africa in early 1942. Most prisoners focused on survival; Buck focused on escape, and he did it by impersonating the enemy. Fluent in German, he fashioned a disguise from a stolen German cap, a waterproof jerkin, and a British greatcoat. He then stopped a German lorry on a main road, asked the driver in German for his pass, and held him up with a spanner that looked like a revolver. Buck and a fellow officer drove the captured truck straight back to British lines. His citation noted his "gallant, consistent and ingenious efforts" and his "extraordinarily quick thinking". He was later awarded the Military Cross.

The Swimmer

Major Howard Percy Hansen of the 6th Lincolnshire Regiment won his VC at Gallipoli in 1915 for rescuing wounded men from a burning hillside under heavy fire. But his most unusual exploit came a month later. Stripping naked and carrying only a revolver and a blanket for disguise, he swam alone along the coast near Suvla Bay, scrambling over rocks that cut and bruised him, to reconnoitre enemy positions. He obtained valuable intelligence, located a troublesome gun, and even shot a Turkish soldier during the expedition. He returned exhausted but successful, having conducted reconnaissance in his birthday suit.

The Lone Bomber

Lance-Corporal Michael O'Leary of the Irish Guards performed one of the First World War's most astonishing single-handed actions in February 1915. When his company was pinned down by German machine-gun fire, he didn't wait for orders. He charged alone down a communications trench, killed five defenders at a barricade, then raced eighty yards to a second barricade where the machine-gun was positioned. He shot the officer and two crew members, captured two survivors, and returned with his prisoners. His company then swept forward. O'Leary was promoted to sergeant before the day ended.

The Reluctant Medic

Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Martin-Leake is one of only three men ever awarded the Victoria Cross twice. What makes his story unusual is that he was a medic who repeatedly abandoned his own safety to tend wounded men under fire. In the Boer War, he treated casualties while lying in the open, just 100 yards from forty Boer riflemen, and continued dressing wounds after being shot three times himself. When the First World War broke out, he was forty years old and feared he'd be rejected as too old, so he travelled to Paris and enlisted at the British Consulate to bypass the age limit. He won his second VC for repeatedly rescuing wounded men under machine-gun and shellfire near Zonnebeke.