Hero of the Month - October 2023
Published in Britain at War in October 2023.
Lieutenant Commander John Bridge GC, GM & Bar
John Bridge started World War Two as a physics teacher and finished it as the recipient of an almost unique set of gallantry medals: the George Cross (GC), together with the George Medal (GM) and Bar. All these decorations were awarded for bravery in his highly-dangerous role as a bomb and mine disposal expert.
Bridge was born in Culcheth, near Warrington, Lancashire, on February 5 1915. His father, Joseph Bridge, was a farmer and his mother Mary (née Taylor) had her hands full looking after seven children. John, who had two brothers and four sisters, attended Leigh Grammar School in what is now part of Greater Manchester. He subsequently obtained a “special honours” degree in physics from King’s College London in 1937 and was awarded a teaching diploma in the following year. After sending out more than 100 job applications, he finally landed a teaching job at a secondary modern school close to his home.
Bridge later moved to Leighton Park Quaker School in Reading, Berkshire. During his second term at the school, he was praised by the headmaster for his teaching ability but then told he was not going to be offered a full-time role as he did have an Oxford or Cambridge University education. Bridge’s next job was at Frith Park Grammar School in Sheffield, accepting at first a temporary role which later became a permanent position.
Early in World War Two, Bridge put his teaching career on hold to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). He became a member of an eightman bomb disposal team – known as the “First 8”. Incredibly, Bridge was called out to deal with his first bomb only five weeks after leaving his teaching job and he was to play a major role in bomb disposal operations for the rest of the war. He was commissioned as a temporary sub lieutenant in the RNVR on June 4 1940 and was soon working as a bomb safety officer in Plymouth, Devon.
Bridge was the first recipient in the Armed Forces of the George Medal and Bar (a second George Medal). He received his first award for disarming a dangerous bomb with a delayed action fuse in Devonport docks, Plymouth, on September 7 1940. This decoration was announced in The London Gazette on December 27 1940. He received the Bar to his GM for raising and defusing a bomb that had fallen between two docks at Falmouth, Cornwall, on May 17 1941. Bridge climbed down and found the bomb at the bottom of a chamber in six feet of water. However, he noticed that there was a hole in the casing which enabled a rope to be threaded through it, so the bomb could be hoisted to the surface and made safe. His second GM was announced in the London Gazette on October 24, 1941.
In April 1942, after a minesweeping appointment, Bridge embarked for South Africa, where he taught others how to carry out mine and bomb disposal work. He and his students dealt with about twelve German mines that had washed up on beaches to the east and north of Cape Town. It was at Simon’s Town, South Africa, that Bridge learned to dive, thereby acquiring a useful new skill for his future work.
After South Africa, Bridge was posted to the Mediterranean theatre, including briefly to Malta and Algiers. In August 1943, he was given a particularly difficult and dangerous task: to clear Messina harbour, Sicily, Italy, of depth charges. Indeed, all but two of the previous members of a bomb disposal team had been killed (five of them) or wounded (two of them) by explosions in this role when Bridge took over the task.
On August 26, Bridge began a four day reconnaissance of the dockyard and harbour. He and his team discovered that there were scores of depth charges scattered around the quays, in pumphouses and substations. There were also 40 in the harbour itself. Having located all of them, he was able to begin diving on August 30. Intermittent shelling continued from enemy guns on the other side of the strait.
At times, visibility underwater was nil, and everything had to be done by a sense of touch. Ever resourceful, Bridge was able to neutralise depth charges which had no external mechanisms attached but, along the coaling wharf, he identified two groups of the type that had virtually wiped out the previous bomb-disposal party.
It was Bridge’s idea to use a small explosive charge to sever the steel ropes that held the depth charges together. Having separated them with a controlled explosion, he was able to attach hooks to the associated devices and the depth charges. Next, using an improvised pulley and block system, the charges were lifted out of the water and laid on the wharf. Inspection of the cylinders revealed a clockwork device, a detonator, primer and a large main charge but the bombs were made safe.
Eventually, Bridge made no fewer than 28 dives to clear the harbour. Altogether 207 devices were dismantled or “discredited” from on or below the surface. The devices had a variety of firing mechanisms, including two with previously unknown systems. Thanks to the bravery, skill and ingenuity of Bridge and his men, Messina harbour was declared open on September 3, the day that the main assault on Italy began.
“I was the only one diving,” Bridge said later. “I had an assistant and several men working above water. My longest spell was one of twenty hours. I did not suffer any particular discomfort and never got tired. I left that to afterwards.”
Bridge’s GC was announced on June 20 1944. His recommendation read: “For the most conspicuous and prolonged bravery and contempt of death in clearing Messina Harbour of depth charges. The recommending officer stated that he had never before had the fortune to be associated with such cool and sustained bravery as Lieutenant Bridge displayed during the 10 days of the operation.”
By the time that his GC was announced, Bridge had been back in action once again. On ‘D-Day+1” – June 7 1944 – he went sent to Normandy to supervise the clearing of the beach at Arromanches of mines and a mass of other explosive devices resulting from the landings.
In September 1944, Bridge displayed still more heroics when 12 crack German swimmers swam twelve miles up river to place torpedoshaped mines under the Nijmegen Bridge in Belgium. Some of the captured swimmers had revealed that the timing devices had been set for four hours but no one knew the precise time.
After the war, Bridge recalled how on September 29 he was just turning in for the night when he received orders to go to Brussels on an urgent mission. He was instructed to take the minimum of bomb disposal tools and then fly on to Nijmegen.
At 8am Bridge took off from Brussels in a twin-engined RAF Avro Anson. “It was an unforgettable experience. We flew at under 100 ft almost the whole length of the corridor. The tops of the church spires seemed higher than us,” he said.
Bridge landed at Grave, where General Horrocks, the commander of XXX Corps, had sent a staff car to pick him up. The bomb disposal expert was taken to the general’s HQ, which was a tent under a tree. Horrocks shook his hand and, after inquiring whether he had had any breakfast, and then said, “Sergeant, get this officer some sandwiches. He will require them while he is working under that bridge.”
Bridge was shown where one of the charges had exploded, blowing a 60-foot hole in the roadway, but leaving the structure of the bridge intact. He borrowed an assault boat and rowed out to the bridge support. All that he could find was a float, part of which was showing through the water. He tried to lift this into the boat but could not do so because there were cables attached. These cables became taut, indicating that they were snagged or attached to an explosive charge.
Bridge said later, “There was only one way to find out, get into the water and explore.”
He stripped to his underpants and dived in. The water was not clear, and he had to feel with his hands and feet. He located a cylindrical object and used his feet to learn as much as possible about it. “By going down until the water touched my chin and having a wire strop between my big toe and the next, I was able to get this round the thing [device].”
Royal Engineers rigged up a pulley, put a half-track vehicle on the bridge and passed a long wire rope down to him. Bridge attached the wire to the strop and returned to the bank, where he could signal to the engineers and control the lifting operation. He then rowed back again and supervised the lowering of the charge into the assault boat where he disarmed it.
In the final year of the war, Bridge considered he had landed a “safe” job – dismantling bombs closer to home rather than abroad. This was as a result of his being posted to Liverpoo. Thanks to his huge skills and calm demeanour, Bridge survived the war, by which point he held the rank of acting lieutenant commander. He took enormous pride in the decorations awarded to other members of his team and in the fact that he had never lost any of them to death or injury.
In March 1945, Bridge received his GC from King George VI at an investiture at Buckingham Palace. Around the same time, he married his long-term girlfriend, Frances Patterson, and the couple went on to have three daughters. After he was demobilised in 1946, Bridge returned to his teaching role. He then became Assistant Education Officer for Southport in 1947 and served as Director of Education for Sunderland Borough Council from 1963 to 1976.
In retirement, Bridge lived at Roker in Sunderland, where his recreations were gardening, fellwalking, fishing, photography and travel. He also published a memoir, Trip to Nijmegen. Bridge died in Sunderland on December 14 2006, aged 91. The headquarters of the Fleet Diving Squadron of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth is named the Bridge Building in his honour.
I do not own Bridge’s gallantry and service medals but they are on display at the gallery bearing my name at the Imperial War Museum, London. There has only been one other holder of the GC, GM and Bar: Lieutenant Hugh Syme, an Australian who also defused unexploded bombs and mines during World War Two.