Hero of the Month - June 2024
Published in Britain at War - June 2024
Corporal George Cameron Wyllie GC
Corporal George Wyllie was highly decorated for an exceptional act of bravery during which he risked his own life to ensure that St Paul’s Cathedral was saved from being badly damaged by a wartime bomb. Like Temporary Lieutenant Robert Davies, who worked with him, he was a bomb disposal expert in the Royal Engineers. Both men were richly rewarded for their gallantry with the award of the George Cross (GC).
George Cameron Wyllie was a Scot – the son of a coal miner – who was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, on Christmas Day 1908. He was brought up in the nearby village of Hurlford. Before the Second World War, Wyllie worked in the Avro aircraft factory in Manchester. However, after the outbreak of hostilities, he enlisted as a private in the Royal Engineers. He underwent his training in Chatham, Kent, and later joined 16th & 17th Bomb Disposal Company.
The sustained aerial bombardment of London began on September 7 1940. Known as the Blitz – from the German word “Blitzkrieg” meaning lightning war, it would continue for more than eight months until May 11 1941. By this point, the Germans had lost the Battle of Britain and they began a new tactic of air attacks against industrial targets, towns, and cities, beginning with raids on London. Most of these attacks took place at night because the RAF had fared so well against the Luftwaffe in their day-light battles.
On September 12 1940, less than a week into the Blitz, Wyllie, then 31 and in the rank of sapper, and Davies, then 39 and in the rank of temporary lieutenant, were called to deal with an unexploded bomb that had fallen close to St Paul’s Cathedral in central London.
Temporary Lieutenant Davies, who was married with four children, was in charge of the bomb disposal section and Sapper Wyllie, who was unoriginally nicknamed “Jock”, was a member of his team. The location made an already hazardous job even more difficult because if the bomb had exploded the cathedral would have been badly damaged. This, in turn, would have been dangerous to those in or close to the building – and any damage to St Paul’s Cathedral would have greatly harmed the morale of the British people at the height of the Blitz. The cathedral, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in the late 17th and early 18th century, was an iconic building that was much loved by the nation.
St Paul’s Cathedral is situated on Ludgate Hill, the highest point of the City of London. Davies, Wyllie and their support team first had to spend quite some time locating the exact position where the bomb had fallen. Eventually, it was Wyllie who found the device, which had embedded itself deep into the pavement in front of the cathedral.
This made their work extremely difficult and both men knew they would be killed instantly if the bomb exploded. Under normal circumstances, they would have detonated the bomb on the spot but its location meant these were anything but normal circumstances. The preservation of St Paul’s Cathedral and the nearby underground station became their priority.
Eventually, the two men managed to ease the bomb from the pavement and at the same time they withdrew its potentially lethal “fangs”. Davies was desperately worried for the safety of his team so he personally chose to drive the Army vehicle in which the bomb was placed. In order to steady the bomb and prevent it from falling, Wyllie sat directly on top of the device with one leg on each side of it. After driving to Hackney Marshes, some distance away from the scene, they safely disposed of the bomb.
On September 30 1940, just 18 days after the incident, the two men’s GCs were announced in The London Gazette. Wyllie’s citation read: “Sapper Wylie [his surname was misspelt] was a member of the Bomb Disposal Section engaged upon the recovery of the bomb which fell in the neighbourhood of St Paul’s Cathedral.
“The actual discovery and removal of the bomb fell to him. Sapper Wylie’s untiring energy, courage, and disregard for danger were an outstanding example for his colleagues.”
Davies’ citation was longer and gave more details of the incident: “Lieutenant Davies was the officer in charge of the party detailed to recover the bomb which fell in the vicinity of St Paul’s Cathedral.
“So conscious was this officer of the imminent danger to the Cathedral that regardless of personal risk he spared neither himself nor his men in their efforts to locate the bomb.
“After unremitting effort, during which all ranks knew that an explosion might occur at any moment, the bomb was successfully extricated.
“In order to shield his men from further danger, Lieutenant Davies himself drove the vehicle in which the bomb was removed and personally carried out its disposal.”
However, it was in an interview carried out many years after the incident, that Wyllie gave more details about exactly what had happened on that dramatic day in September 1940. Wyllie, who was a quiet, shy man, said, “The bomb fell on the 12th September and was finally exploded on the 15th. We went to this job in lorries. Every job was the same. It left a crater. It was at the bottom and it took two days to locate the one at St Paul’s. The bomb was about 16-17 feet down when I go to it. You couldn’t see much,[I] just used to tap down to it. When you were getting to the loose earth all the time, you knew you were coming to something. As the bomb falls, it is followed by loose earth.
“Once we had located it, Davies went down himself for a look and then we got down to getting it out. I went down again and put a steel cable around the bomb to bring it out. Twice it broke. It should never have come out. It should have been blown up there because it had a special fuse in it, which we called a seventeenth fuse. The word from the War Office was ‘blow them up’ because there were booby traps in them. But the crater was just down the main steps from the Cathedral and there would have been a great deal of damage…
“The area was cordoned off and nobody was allowed in the vicinity…There was an additional danger as it was only about 30 yards from St Paul’s underground station. It was just too dangerous to blow it up where it was. Davies inspired his men all the time. He was a great leader. He was at the top of it all the time giving instructions to me as I slung the half-inch thick cable around it and the lorry started to drag it away. Just after putting the wire on, I would climb back up and as it broke I went back down again. It broke twice because all sorts of cables and telephone wires were tangled up underneath the bomb. You really didn’t know what you were going to hit, whether it was a live cable or not. When we finally got it on to the lorry, it was estimated to weigh about 1,000 lbs, about five feet long and two feet across.”
1940 was a big year for Wyllie. On Christmas Day of that year, and on his 32nd birthday, he married Violet Amelia Mylrea in Hackney. The couple went on to have a son.
Wyllie received his GC from King George VI at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on June 17 1941. Davies had received his decoration four months earlier.
Both men received some of the earliest awards of the GC and when, in fact, they carried out their brave actions, the award did not exist. It was only on September 23 1940 that George VI addressed the nation to announce the institution of a new decoration for gallantry: the GC. He said: “In order that they should be worthily and promptly recognised, I have decided to create, at once, a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life. I propose to give my name to this new distinction, which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and the George Medal for wider distribution.”
From the outset, the GC was intended to be a highly-prestigious decoration and it would only be awarded to men and women who had shown quite outstanding bravery. The VC had been instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 to recognise supreme gallantry in the presence of the enemy – most notably for courage displayed by British servicemen during the Crimean War. Although the award was a resounding success, it was eventually realised that a separate award or decoration was needed to acknowledge supreme courage that did not actually take place in the heat of battle.
Early in the Second World War, Winston (later Sir Winston) Churchill, the great wartime Prime Minister, shared the King’s enthusiasm for the new decoration. He realised that the Blitz would place a great strain on the residents of London and other cities and he believed that awards of the GC would be a significant morale booster for British citizens. Although the GC is sometimes described as “the civilian VC”, many of its recipients served in the Armed Forces, usually as bomb disposal experts.
Later in the Second World War, Wyllie went on to suffer from poor health due to blood poisoning which resulted in more than 20 operations on one of his legs. In 1943, he was discharged from the Army in the rank of corporal as medically unfit.
He then worked in a battery factory in Stamford Hill, north-east London. It was while working at this factory that Wyllie, once again, nearly lost his life. He heard a “doodle bug”, a flying bomb, which was heading straight for the building. Wyllie shouted for the manager to duck and threw his immediate boss, his so-called “governor”, behind a wall. The manager was killed and the factory was destroyed, but Wyllie and his boss survived.
Davies’ wartime career was, however, blighted by a criminal conviction. He was court-martialled for stealing 500 sandbags and timber, receiving stolen clothes and obtaining £190 by false pretences. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for these offences. After the war, Davies ran a building business. He died in Sydney, Australia, on September 27 1975, six days short of his 75th birthday. His GC is on display at the Imperial War Museum in London.
After the war, Wyllie worked for 24 years at Ford’s Dagenham factory. His main passion, however, was football and he was a committed Leyton Orient supporter. Wyllie died at his home in Bow, east London, on February 1 1987, aged 78. His GC is, appropriately enough, on display at St Paul’s Cathedral.