On June 14 1945 Matthews was the senior observer of 828 Naval Air Squadron. Sitting in the rear cockpit of Avenger fighter-bomber JZ 547, flown by the squadron CO, Lieutenant Commander Alan Swanton, Matthews was about to lead a raid on the Japanese-held island of Truk. JZ 547 was at the front of the crowded flight deck of the fleet carrier Implacable and had the shortest length of deck for a running take-off.
Commander Nigel Matthews As Swanton charged along at full throttle, he realised he had insufficient power for take-off on the wet, oily deck and – too late – aborted. The aircraft "trickled" into the sea just 200 yards directly ahead of the carrier; as she was streaming full speed at 30 knots it was impossible to take evasive action.
Matthews looked up briefly to see the Implacable's sharp bows strike his aircraft at the wing-root and cut it "like butter". The next few minutes were filled with darkness and noise as violent eddies tossed and tumbled him in the sea. He swallowed a great deal of salt water, but as he was swept into the wake he met Ward, who helped him climb into his life raft. Moments later, from the other side of the ship, up bobbed Swanton.
Swanton was bleeding and weighed down by his dinghy, which had not inflated, and Matthews saved him by cutting him free; he and Ward supported Swanton between their own rafts until, 20 minutes later, the destroyer Terpsichore picked them up.
Swanton was wounded and remained in the destroyer's sick bay for two days, but Matthews was transferred back to Implacable and flew a second sortie on the evening of June 14. He was awarded a DSC for his "determination and eagerness that have been an inspiration and example to others".
Door de Graaf
Englishwoman who helped run the Dutch section of SOE and married two of its key agents
Dodie Sherston, as she was then, was working as a clerk at the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Berkeley Square when, in 1943, her Aunt "Outoo" took her to see The Silver Fleet, a film about the Dutch Navy. The outing was followed by dinner in Chinatown, where they shared a table with a young Dutch pilot, Jos Sipkes.
He introduced Dodie to the "Oranjehaven", a club established in 1942 in Bayswater, where escaping "Engelandvaarders" (young Dutchmen who had fled to England to join the Allies) were looked after. Dodie befriended Sally Noach, a Jewish boy who taught her Dutch, and began working at the centre, welcoming the exiles and making them feel at home.
She soon fell in love with Peter Tazelaar, a dashing Dutch sailor who would become involved in carrying out secret assignments for Queen Wilhelmina. He was later celebrated for a mission in which he was dropped at the Dutch coast by submarine wearing a dinner jacket, managing to get past German patrols by pretending to be a drunken reveller (an incident said to have inspired the opening scene in the James Bond movie Goldfinger). They married in secret, Dodie fearing her father's disapproval since Tazelaar was part Indonesian.
Raymond D'Addario
Photographer at the Nuremberg trials whose photographs helped put faces to the crimes of Nazi Germany
In the course of the Tribunal he took many hundreds of photographs, not only of the defendants accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also of the judges and lawyers from Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France, who were gathered at the Palace of Justice for a trial described by the president, Lord Justice Lawrence, a British high court judge, as "unique in the history of jurisprudence of the world".
As well as the group shots in the dock, D'Addario took close-ups of the individual defendants, sometimes singly, sometimes conferring in whispers, and pictures of the chief British and American prosecutors, Sir Hartley Shawcross, the Attorney General in the recently-elected Labour government; Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, a future Conservative Home Secretary; and Robert Jackson, a judge of the US Supreme Court.
His coverage was all the more remarkable given the ban on the use of flashbulbs in the dark-panelled Courtroom 600.
Penny Feiwel
Tottenham nurse who braved typhoid and gore as a Republican volunteer in the Spanish Civil War
In her memoirs, English Penny (1992), she recalled the days and nights without rest, coping with constant shortages of medical supplies. "We were flooded with wounded men. It was ghastly. Inside the operating theatre we had no heating except a gasoline stove, and sometimes it was so cold that I would be glad to be in a room crammed full of people to share their bodily heat. I was working as an anaesthetist, assistant surgeon and theatre nurse. I had to decide which case was the most urgent for operation, and then at once set up tables for instruments."
Before Christmas 1937 she travelled to Madrid to make a broadcast asking for more nurses to volunteer, and herself caught typhoid. She spent much of her three-week recovery leave in England campaigning for help to be sent to Spain, though she found people more preoccupied by the threat of war with Germany. When someone objected that "Spain is Red", she replied: "Yes, it is. Red with blood. The blood is splashed over the streets and the gutters often run with it. For weeks my fingernails were blocked up with clotted blood and my arms were splashed up to the elbows with it."
In 1938 she was working with a Spanish medical unit in the mountains near Valencia when she was severely wounded in an air raid: "I can't remember whether we were in the middle of operating or were on the move," she said. "I just remember waking up covered in nothing but bandages, being given a painful drip in my thigh. I could see nothing except red and white." She was subsequently evacuated on a British warship.
Christian Lambertsen
Scientist who developed breathing apparatus used by special forces frogmen and coined the term 'scuba’
A keen amateur diver, Lambertsen was convinced that he could design a more flexible device than the heavy metal helmets tethered by hoses to boats on the surface that were standard issue before the war. He began working on his breathing apparatus during his vacations from Rutgers, making contraptions rigged with hoses and a bicycle pump.
His breakthrough came at medical school when he incorporated carbon dioxide filters from anaesthesia equipment. The Laru let divers swim freely and invisibly, and consisted of a mask, breathing tubes, a canister for absorption of exhaled carbon dioxide, a breathing bag and a controllable oxygen supply, all mounted on a canvas vest. The carbon dioxide filters enabled the diver to re-breathe the air he exhaled while underwater, which meant there were no telltale bubbles.
The Office of Strategic Services (the CIA’s forerunner) tested the new system by sending OSS swimmers to infiltrate the heavy defences of the US Navy at Guantanamo Bay and blow up an old barge. The mission was a success, a secret government report concluded, because “Navy sound detection gear did not reveal the presence of underwater swimmers”. The OSS subsequently recruited Lambertsen to establish the first cadres of US operational combat swimmers and to train special underwater forces deployed in Burma.
John Murray
Army intelligence officer who won an immediate MC after rallying his Gurkha battalion under heavy fire
On May 26 1944, Major-General “Punch” Cowan, commander of the 17th Indian Division, asked for the loan of a battalion to help deal with an enemy-held feature known as Red Hill, close to his HQ on the Bishenpur Road, south-west of Imphal.
The task fell to 3rd Battalion 1st King George V’s Own Gurkha Rifles (3/1 GR), part of 20th Indian Division. On the afternoon of May 28, after an artillery barrage, the battalion attacked. A tank of the 7th Light Cavalry came up in support but was quickly knocked out.
The Japanese use of grenades and highly-trained snipers proved very damaging. When the commanding officer, two company commanders and the adjutant were killed or wounded, the attack faltered. Furthermore, while the enemy used the pause to strengthen its positions, the Gurkhas’ carriers became bogged down in the paddy fields.
At this critical moment, Murray, an intelligence officer, took command of the battalion, rallying his men, restoring the situation and, when ordered to withdraw, disengaging the remnants of two companies (which were still involved in fierce close-quarter fighting) without further losses. The citation for his immediate MC paid tribute to his leadership and added that he had shown coolness and self-assurance that were exceptional for his length of service.
Lt-Col Ronald Dowden
Soldier who spent two years as a PoW and oversaw the complex restoration of Prior Park College at Bath
On leaving Eastbourne College, in 1941 Ronnie joined the Army as a rifleman in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Commissioned in 1942, he was sent to North Africa. In 1943 he landed near Naples as commander of a company which consisted largely of men who had deserted from other regiments. He took part in the successful assault on Hill 411 (Monte Rotundo) near Sessa, which was taken by night under intense machine-gun fire.
Dowden and his men were then ordered to defend a small hillock near Anzio, but came under heavy mortar attack and accurate sniper fire. By June 18 his small force was surrounded and they had lost contact with their HQ; they were taken prisoner by the Italians.
Dowden recalled being asked by a German officer if he was being well-treated by his Italian captors. “Yes,” Dowden replied, “although one of them took my watch.” Within 24 hours his watch had been restored to him.
Mario Traverso
Officer with the Savoy Cavalry who took part in the last great mounted charge in war, in Russia in 1942
There, on the evening of August 23, an Italian patrol encountered a Soviet rearguard of 2,000 men supported by mortars and machine-guns. The regiment’s monocled commanding officer, Count Alessandro Bettoni, winner of two Olympic golds in equestrianism, ordered his men to take defensive positions before settling down to dine off the regimental silver.
The following morning, after breakfast, Bettoni gave the order to attack across a plain thick with sunflowers. Officers, wearing red neck ties, slipped on white gloves for the occasion. They wielded captured Cossack swords, which were heavier, and thus more destructive, than Italian sabres.
Such was the thirst to take part in what was – even then – recognised as an unusual event, that Traverso’s commander rode off to join the four cavalry squadrons, each of 150 men, which formed the main thrust of the attack.
Traverso was left in charge of the fifth (machine-gun) squadron, which was the first to advance, laying a thick field of fire from the front and centre of the Italian position directly into two lines of the 812th Siberian Infantry Regiment. Around Traverso, the other Italian squadrons formed up at a walk, before breaking into a trot, canter and finally an all-out gallop. As they set off the battle cry went up: “Sabres. To hand. Charge!”
What followed proved to be a textbook mounted attack. The second squadron broke right, before turning sharply to hammer through the Siberians’ left flank, and then wheeling around again to press the advantage from behind, hurling hand grenades into the disintegrating enemy line. Bettoni then ordered the fourth squadron to attack head on, and the battle wore down into brutal hand-to-hand fighting, with many of the Savoy having dismounted.
At this crucial point the third squadron launched a second diagonal attack, similar to that which had opened the battle, and Soviet resolve crumbled. As the smoke cleared, their losses stood at 150, with a further 500 captured. The Savoy Cavalry had lost fewer than 40 men.
“You were magnificent,” a German officer remarked to the Italians afterwards. “We no longer know how to do these things.”
David Purnell
Gunner who was severely wounded in the Salerno landings but went on to win an MC in the Italian campaign
In the last week of September 1944, Purnell, serving with the 70th Field Regiment RA (70 FR), was OP officer in support of “D” Company, 16th Battalion Durham Light Infantry (16 DLI). The company was given the task of attacking a group of farmhouses held by the Germans on the summit of a feature between Cesena and Rimini.
David Purnell The supporting tanks were firing smoke canisters, which were a mixed blessing: although they gave cover, they weighed several pounds and were dropping from a considerable height, and the infantrymen had to be careful not to get hit.
They struggled up the hill through vineyards strung with mines. When they reached the farmhouses, they left the Germans on the ground floor, got up the stairs, lobbed down a few grenades, signalled to the tanks to demolish the building and then quickly got out. The DLI secured the position, but the Germans counter-attacked in strength throughout the night, supporting their infantry with phosphorus bombs, mortars and 88mm shells.
Purnell, who was in a highly exposed position and had the whole site under observation, called up to ask how close his shells could fall. He made the calculations and directed the fire of his battery. Grim determination and valiant support from the gunners kept the enemy in check. He was awarded an immediate MC.
Tuviah Friedman
Nazi-hunter whose efforts contributed to the capture of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann
He scoured thousands of documents and interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors for hints of Eichmann's whereabouts. To begin with the search was hampered by the lack of a picture, so Friedman found one of Eichmann's girlfriends, enabling the police to raid her home and confiscate a picture that was corroborated by Jews who had known him. He even visited Linz, Austria, where Eichmann's father owned an electrical goods store, and bought a light bulb: "I felt, after looking at the old man, that I had seen Satan's father," he recalled.
When the trail ran cold he bought classified ads in newspapers appealing for information and offered a reward (despite having no money) for information leading to Eichmann's arrest.
His obsession paid off in October 1959 when he received a letter from Lothar Hermann, a half-Jewish refugee from Nazi persecution who had arrived in Argentina in 1938. Hermann, his wife and their daughter Sylvia lived in Buenos Aires. Sylvia had become friendly with one of Eichmann's sons, who visited the Hermanns on various occasions, and made anti-semitic remarks. Though Eichmann lived under an alias, he had insisted on his sons continuing to bear the real family name.
General Vang Pao
Laotian recruited by the CIA to lead a guerrilla campaign against the communists in the Vietnam War
From 1961 to 1973, from his remote headquarters in the mountains, Vang Pao led his irregular army against the Laotian and Vietnamese communists, disrupting supply lines, rescuing downed American pilots and helping to defend radar installations that guided US bombing runs over Vietnam. His fearlessness in battle, coupled with the fact that he was able to bring rice and medical supplies to villagers, gained him the status of a minor deity among his soldiers.
Tens of thousands of Hmong died during the campaign, which remains one of the least-known chapters in the annals of the Vietnam War. In 1969 Richard Helms, the then CIA director, told the White House that the Hmong had "borne a major share of the active fighting'' in Laos and as a result Vang Pao had been "forced to use 13- and 14-year-old children to replace his casualties''. Yet the secret war in Laos went on for six more years until the final collapse of American forces in south-east Asia in 1975. "Honour with one another, sympathy for one another, faith for one another, that's how we survived,'' Vang Pao said later.
