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Lt Cdr John Bridge GC GM* RNVR World Naval Ships Forums Archive

Lt Cdr John Bridge GC GM* RNVR

Posts 1 to 6

[B]Lt Cdr John Bridge GC GM* RNVR[/B] Published in the Daily Telegraph 29 Dec 2006: Lieutenant-Commander John Bridge, who died on December 14 aged 91, held the George Cross and a George Medal and Bar; he won his GC for clearing enemy depth charges from Messina harbour in Sicily in August 1943. With the invasion of the Italian mainland imminent, Messina harbour had to be cleared of depth charges and made safe for shipping. On August 21, shortly after the Germans had been driven out of the north-east of the island, a bomb disposal team entered Messina to do a reconnaissance. Two days later five members of the party were killed and two wounded when an attempt to lift the depth charges resulted in a huge explosion. Bridge, a temporary lieutenant in the RNVR, was ordered to go to Messina and take over the operation. From talking to the two survivors, he learned that the enemy had left behind groups of depth charges lashed together with steel wire. Attached to each group was a mechanism, so far unidentified, consisting of two metal cylinders fastened together. On August 26 Bridge began a four-day reconnaissance of the dockyard and harbour. There were hundreds of depth charges scattered around the quays, in pump houses and sub-stations. There were also 40 in the harbour. 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 straits. In places visibility was nil, and everything had to be done by a sense of touch. He 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 almost wiped out the previous bomb disposal party. Bridge hit on the idea of using a small explosive charge to sever the steel ropes that held the depth charges together. Having separated them by a controlled explosion, he was able to attach hooks to the unknown mechanism and the depth charges. Using an improvised pulley and block system, the charges were carefully 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. After 28 dives on to the booby-trapped groups, all the charges were made safe, including two which were recovered with their mechanisms intact. Bridge made safe or discredited a further 207 depth charges, above or below the water, with all types of firing mechanisms. "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 20 hours. I did not suffer any particular discomfort and never got tired. I left that to afterwards." As a result of the efforts of Bridge and his team, on September 2, the day before the assault on Italy, Messina harbour was reported cleared and safe to ferry troops to the invasion beaches. The citation 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." Bridge was invested with the George Cross by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on March 16 1945. He had only recently married. "It was a sort of extended honeymoon," his wife said at the investiture. Two of his team received George Medals. John Bridge was born on February 5 1915 at Culcheth, near Warrington in Lancashire. He was educated at Leigh Grammar School and London University, where he read Physics. After graduating and obtaining his teacher's diploma, he joined the staff of Firth Park Secondary School in Sheffield as a physics master. In 1940 he volunteered for bomb disposal work because, as he explained later, it involved saving lives rather than taking them. He was commissioned into the RNVR. In September 1940 Bridge was in charge of a BD squad in Cornwall and carried out the demolition of a very dangerous bomb fitted with a delayed-action fuse. He was awarded the George Medal. In March the next year he dealt with 15 bombs, one of which had fallen in the dockyard at Devonport and would have caused great damage had it not been neutralised. He received the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct. The following May, Bridge disposed of a bomb which had fallen into the sluice valve chamber between two graving docks at Falmouth and failed to explode. He was awarded a Bar to his GM, the first naval officer to be so honoured. Bridge was posted to Simonstown in South Africa in April 1942. There was a threat to the harbour installations from manned underwater weapons and, at his own suggestion, he was taught to dive. After becoming thoroughly at home in a diving suit, he spent a good deal of time on underwater rock-blasting. In August 1943, after a short posting to Malta and Algiers, he arrived in Sicily. In June 1944 Bridge went to Normandy with the Allied invasion force as a naval bomb safety officer. He dealt with a large number of bombs, grenades, mines and shells before being drafted to Antwerp in September. There he was involved in mine-clearing operations in the river Scheldt and the harbour basins. On September 29 Bridge 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 — "whatever that might mean," as Bridge said later — then fly on to Nijmegen. At 8am Bridge took off from Brussels in a twin-engined RAF Avro Anson. "It was an unforgettable experience," he said afterwards. "We flew at under 100 ft almost the whole length of the corridor. The tops of the church spires seemed higher than us. The cows dashed frantically trying to get away from the frightening noise, and people looked up at this large machine skimming the roofs of their houses." Below them British lorries lay nose to tail where they had been bulldozed off the road to clear the way for the next convoy bringing supplies to the men in the front line. Bridge landed at Grave, where General Horrocks, the commander of XXX Corps, had sent a staff car to pick him up. He 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, turned to his sergeant: "Sergeant, get this officer some sandwiches. He will require them while he is working under that bridge." The general made an unforgettable impression on Bridge. He had moved a whole corps 75 miles in a day and yet he found the time to concern himself with the needs of one soldier. Bridge was taken to the road bridge over the river Waal and briefed by a major in the Royal Engineers. Twelve German naval frogmen, trained in Venice, had carried out an attack on the Waal bridges in the early morning of the previous day. One of them was a German swimming champion who had competed against the British in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The frogmen's objective was to float three pairs of torpedo-shaped explosive charges down the river and sink them against the bridge piers. The destruction of the bridges would cut vital communications between the British troops fighting north of the river and the supply areas south of it. The 12 German NCOs had entered the river in darkness, 12 miles upstream, guiding explosives equipped with four-hour time-delay fuses. One team destroyed the central span of the railway bridge. The other eight-man team, despite coming under fire from a machine gun, succeeded in placing two pairs of charges against the road bridge. On the way back, they landed in the wrong place and all but two were killed or taken prisoner. Bridge was shown where one of the charges had later 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. "There was only one way to find out," Bridge wrote later, "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." The Sappers 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 rowed back again and supervised the lowering of the charge into the assault boat where he then disarmed it. Bridge was posted back to England and promoted to lieutenant-commander. In 1946 he returned to teaching and to Firth Park Grammar School. The following year he was appointed assistant education officer for Southport. He was made director of education for Sunderland borough council in 1963 and retired in 1976. In retirement Bridge lived at Roker, in Sunderland, where his recreations were gardening and fell walking, fishing, photography and travel. Reflecting on his service during the war, he took great pride in the decorations awarded to members of his team and in the fact that he had never lost any of them through death or injury. He published a volume of memoirs, Trip to Nijmegen. John Bridge married, in 1945, Jean Patterson. They had three daughters.

A brave man!

What a story. What a man, and his colleagues. I still get confused though why he didn't get a VC, whilst accepting that they are of equal standard. He was a military man, doing a military job and if disposing of your enemy's bombs is not "in the face of the enemy" I have trouble thinking what is. Bridge's colleagues now serving in current conflicts (another name for a war) also seem to be only getting the same 'second level - though equal' award. A toast to them all. Stewart

There is a fine, longstanding tradition of the GC being awarded for bomb & mine disposal as a Level One decoration on a par with the VC which is awarded specifically to service personnel facing different challenges while up to their necks in muck, bullets and bayonet charges. In fact, the GC was introduced in 1940 almost exclusively for this purpose. The first twenty recipients were: [QUOTE]Thomas Hopper Alderson GC, Air Raid Precaution, Bomb Rescue Lieutenant Robert Davies GC, Royal Engineers, Bomb Disposal Sapper George Wylie GC, Royal Engineers, Bomb Disposal Dr Arthur Douglas Merriman GC, DFC, OBE, MA, MEd, DSc, CIMechE, FRSE, Department of Supply, Bomb Disposal Special Constable Brandon Moss GC, Conventry Constabulary, Bomb Rescue Roy Harris GC, Air Raid Precaution, Bomb Disposal Squadron Leader Eric Moxey GC, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Lieutenant John Patton GC CBE, Royal Canadian Engineers, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant Peter Danckwerts GC, MBE, FRS, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Chief Petty Officer Reginald Ellingworth GC, Royal Navy, Bomb Disposal Lieutenant-Commander Richard Ryan GC, Royal Navy, Bomb Disposal Lieutenant William Eastman GC, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Bomb Disposal Captain Robert Jephson-Jones GC, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant Robert Armitage GC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant John Herbert Babington GC, OBE, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant Richard Moore GC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Leonard Harrison GC, Air Ministry, Bomb Disposal Squadron Leader John Noel Dowland, Royal Air Force, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant John Duppa-Miller GC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal Sub-Lieutenant William Taylor GC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Bomb Disposal[/QUOTE] I believe that it would demean the achievements of the original recipients if the GC were no longer seen as 'good enough' for today's bomb & mine disposal personnel. For a fuller list of wartime awards to naval personnel, see '[I]WW II Awards for Diving and Bomb & Mine Disposal[/I]' in the [URL="http://www.mcdoa.org.uk/MCD_History_Frames.htm"]Branch History[/URL] section of the MCDOA website.

For information, my grandfather Able Seaman Thomas Patrick Peters GM was one of the two surface assistants who were honoured with the George Medal for gallantry at Messina Harbour. He was part of the first group that was sent ashore from HMS Elissa (minesweeper) to deal with the devices left behind to hinder the allies. He was sent back to the ship at one point to retrieve a piece of much needed kit. When he returned he found the members of the team either dead or wounded. They had come across one of the booby trapped bombs that Lt Cmdr Bridge later successfully worked out how to defuse. It was only when Bridge arrived that they went back to work and were eventually successful, it was his expertise coupled with their immense bravery that got them through. Regards Laurence Peters

Apart from being incredibly brave-he must have been extraordinarily skilful and a stoic to boot.May he be well remembered. jainso31

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