The Gun Counter

UK vet dies 68 years after "posthumous" honor
By ROBERT BARR, The Associated Press

9:17 a.m. December 30, 2008

LONDON — A British World War II hero who fought valiantly in North Africa despite severe wounds has died 68 years after he was "posthumously" awarded the nation's highest combat honor by officials who thought he had been killed.

Eric Wilson, who had been the oldest living holder of the Victoria Cross, died at age 96, according to obituaries published Tuesday in The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Jenny Hunt, a warden of St. Mary Magdelene church in Stowell, where Wilson lived, said he died Dec. 23.

Wilson had been reported killed in North Africa in 1940, but was later found alive and trying to tunnel his way out of a prison camp. He went on to further service in Africa and Burma.

His family was notified in August 1940 that he was killed while staying with his machine gun, though wounded and ill, in a futile effort to repel a larger Italian force. The Victoria Cross was awarded two months later.

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...never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.