Hero of the Month - August 2023
Published in Britain at War in August 2023.
Captain Harry Cator VC, MM
Harry Cator experienced the highs and lows of war in the space of just three days during World War One. In the spring of 1917, he displayed such outstanding courage that he was later awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). However, just three days afterwards and before he was even recommended for Britain and the Commonwealth’s most prestigious gallantry award, Cator was almost killed by an exploding enemy shell that left him with serious head and shoulder injuries.
Harry Cator was born in Drayton, near Norwich, Norfolk, on January 24 1894. He was the son of Robert Cator, who worked as a platelayer on the railways, and his wife Laura (née Shinn). He was educated at Drayton School but left at the age of 12. After working with farm horses, he followed his father on to the railways. Cator Jnr worked as a railway porter on the Midland and Great Northern Railway, with part of this role spent at Thursford station, near Fakenham, Norfolk.
Aged 20, Cator married carpenter’s daughter Rose Alice Morris at St Nicholas’ Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and the couple eventually went on to have a son. However, there was no time for a honeymoon. On the very day after his wedding, he enlisted into the 7th (Service) Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment, within weeks of the outbreak of World War One.
On June 2 1915, Cator and his comrades arrived in Boulogne, France, and soon he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He was quickly in the thick of the action and for the next ten months he served in the trenches, near both Armentières and opposite the Hohenzollern Redoubt. During this time, the East Surreys were part of the 37th Brigade, 12th Division, which took part in some of the heaviest fighting of the first two years of the Great War.
On July 3 1916, Cator showed such exceptional courage that he was later awarded the first of his two gallantry medals: the Military Medal (MM). During the Battle of Albert – the name for the Anglo-French offensive during the first two weeks of the Battle of the Somme – 36 men got caught up in German barbed wire. They faced the likelihood of being killed, wounded or captured but Cator was one of those who risked his life to rescue them from no-man’s land. The citation for his MM praised his “fine work” during the operation to bring the men back to safety.
Cator’s talents as a soldier were noticed by senior officers who offered him a commission. However, he declined this preferring to remain on the frontline with his comrades. While still serving as a sergeant, he took part in the attack on Guedecourt on October 19 1916, exactly a week after the Newfoundland Regiment had launched a heroic attack on the enemy during the Battle of Le Transloy, one of the major battles of the Somme.
The following year, Cator was still serving in France. On April 9 1917, the first day of the Battle of Arras, the 7th Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment, took part in a determined attack on the German line close to Monchy-le-Preux, some five miles east of Arras. This attack followed five days of heavy bombardment of the enemy positions. Typically, Cator was again at the centre of the action on April 9, taking part in attacks on enemy redoubts and machine-gun posts.
At one point during the fighting, Cator’s platoon suffered heavy losses as a result of enemy machine-gun fire from ‘Hangest Trench’, near the Arras–Feuchy road. Cator decided he had to do something to stop the slaughter of his comrades. He and another soldier advanced across open ground, through a hail of bullets and headed for the machine-gun post at one end of the trench.
During their advance, his comrade was killed but Cator continued to push forward alone, picking up a Lewis gun and some ammunition as he went. When he was close enough, he stopped, took aim with the Lewis gun, and killed most of the machine-gun team, which included a German officer, and took the others prisoner. He even went into the position to collect enemy papers. Cator then single-handedly held on to that end of the trench, which enabled his advancing comrades to take the rest of it, capturing 100 prisoners and five more machine-guns. Feuchy Chapel Redoubt fell to the attackers, the next day, April 10. On April 11, the Essex Yeomanry took part in the attack on Monchy.
Three days after his courageous action, on April 12, Cator was badly wounded by a bursting shell which fractured his upper and lower jaw, while he also sustained shrapnel injuries to his shoulder. It was while he was recovering in hospital in Bristol that he was told he had been awarded the VC. His decoration was announced on June 8 1917, less than two months after his bravery on the battlefield. Awarded “For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty”, the citation detailed his astonishing bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. During the summer of that year, Cator had to have several operations to repair the damage to his jaw and face.
Cator was presented with his VC by King George V in an investiture at Buckingham Palace on July 21 1917. The young soldier was feted as a war hero and received numerous letters of congratulations. One letter, sent anonymously, heaped praise on him for his courage. Clearly written by a fellow soldier from the East Surreys, the letter read: “Allow me to offer you my heartiest congratulations in winning the most coveted honour it is possible to win. I am certain no one in the Army has been more entitled to the Victoria Cross than yourself. Every time you have been in the line you have always inspired the men by your personal bravery, and when you were with me in B and C Company, I always knew things were all right when you were about. I was extremely sorry to hear you were wounded, and trust that it is not of a serious nature.”
Another letter stated: “The act for which he [Cator] was awarded the Victoria Cross was magnificent. It is only deeds of simply colossal heroism which get the Victoria Cross, so you can imagine how proud and delighted [we were] when Sgt Cator was awarded the most coveted honour.”
A local newspaper, the Surrey Comet, was equally fulsome in its compliments aimed at the East Surreys, in general, and Cator, in particular. “The gallant East Surreys have covered themselves in glory in this war, and have a record for the highest honours of which any regiment might be proud and which few, if any, can rival. To its proud Honours’ Roll there is added now a fifth Victoria Cross, won by Sgt Harry Cator, for the performance of deeds of gallantry which will fill everyone who reads them with admiration.”
The paper said of his gallantry: “This is indeed a glorious episode, for which the name and fame of Sgt Harry [Cator] of the East Surreys will be enshrined for ever in the hearts of his countrymen and in the annals of the regiment, which is proud of him. Performed in contempt of death and of great odds, such deeds are as if inspired. Was ever the Victoria Cross bestowed more worthily?”
In March 1918, the Mayor of Norwich presented Cator with his MM and French decoration, the Croix de Guerre avec Palme, on the green at Drayton, his home village. This presentation came after Cator, accompanied by his wife Rose, had been given a hero’s welcome, being met off the train in Drayton by a four-wheeled carriage draped in a Union flag.
Cator survived the war and was discharged from the Army in 1919, by this point aged 25. After the war, he worked as a shoe repairer, then a postman and, finally, a civil servant with the Unemployed Assistance Board. In 1927, he also became a Freemason, having been initiated into the Wanderers Lodge No. 1604 in London.
During the Second World War, he re-enlisted and in 1942 was given the rank of captain quarter-master with the 6th Battalion, Norfolk Home Guard. Later in the war, he was posted to a transit camp in Newhaven, Sussex, where he learnt German. His final wartime role was as commandant of Cranwich PoW camp in Norfolk, where he improved his German by speaking with the prisoners.
He was much liked by some of the PoWs at the camp, so much so that they remained in touch with him after the war when they were back in Germany. Once again, he left his mark as a letter to him from one of the prisoners illustrates. Penned after the war was over, it said: “It took a long time before I realised that you taught us a lesson worth remembering. In a world full of passion you demonstrated an independent unanimity. You showed all understanding of the former emergency that we, the prisoners of Hostel Cranwich, have all reason to be thankful to you. I think you gave us an example of how our attitude should be. This letter is to give you our sincere thanks.”
Cator returned to his job as a civil servant after the war and also joined the Territorial Army. He retired from this TA role in 1951. His great interests once he had retired were gardening, ornithology and mountaineering. He was also an active member of the VC and GC Association, the Old Comrades’ Association and the local branch of the Royal British Legion.
Cator and his wife celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1964, by which point they were living in Sprowston on the outskirts of Norwich. Captain Harry Cator, VC, MM, died of pneumonia in Norwich and Norfolk Hospital on April 7 1966, aged 72. On his death bed, he still had shrapnel from his war wounds in his body. In addition to his widow Rose, Cator left a son, two grandsons and a granddaughter. He was buried at St Mary’s and St Margaret’s Churchyard in Sprowston.
Part of the engraving on his headstone reads, “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.” His widow, Rose, died in January 1969 and was buried with her husband. I am delighted to say that I am the proud custodian of the Cator medal group having bought them at auction from Spink in London in 1996.
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