Last updated 13:57, Thursday, 09 October 2008

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MEDAL: George Skelly

ELIZABETH Gibb’s recent family history quest in Whitehaven to find a “missing’’ plaque dedicated to the memory of her war hero second cousin George Skelly was, it seems, always doomed to failure – for it appears such a plaque never existed.

Elizabeth (née Skelly), who lives in Devizes, Wiltshire, may have been misinformed, told by a relative that there once was such a plaque, commemorating the bravery of Military Medal winner George, in the old Town Hall. But her search, while on holiday here this summer, had proved fruitless.

Following enquiries with former staff who worked at the Duke Street building, and with Copeland Council, the Beacon and with Pearl Matthews, the daughter of George Skelly, our con-clusion is that Elizabeth’s informant was probably mistaken. Even an appeal to Whitehaven News readers, who usually come up trumps for us, drew a blank.

But plaque or no plaque, George’s story is a fascinating one, and well worth the telling. How often does a wartime conscientious objector end up with the Military Medal? For a man who refused to fight and kill in the theatre of war to return home from D-Day exploits with a medal for bravery, ending up in the Royal Liverpool Hospital with severe injuries, was an interesting outcome, to say the least.

To say a conscientious objector stuck to his guns is perhaps an inappropriate turn of phrase, but George certainly held his principles steadfastly and thus found himself assigned to the Pioneer Corps and subsequently the non-combatant Royal Army Medical Corps where he wouldn’t have to fight but he would be called on to cope with the horrific injuries of those who had.

Ultimately George Skelly found himself with the RAMS parachute regiment, being dropped into Normandy on D-Day. George was a strongly religious man and had taken part in several Billy Graham crusades, both in America and when the evangelist Graham came to Britain. He wrote a religious tract about his experience in France, entitled A Paratrooper’s Exploit in which he told how he kept God close during difficult and dangerous times.

It begins: “On the night of June 5, 1944, about 600 of us Paratroopers were gathered together on an aerodrome in the South of England. We were to have a short service prior to getting into the planes. The Padre, who was himself dead within 24 hours, read to us from the Bible.

“Shortly after 12.30am on the morning of D-Day we were crossing the Channel in the Stirling Bombers. The door out of which we were to jump was already open and the anti-aircraft guns could be heard meeting the planes ahead.

“Opposite to me was a young fellow who had slept in the bed nearest mine for some months previously. I had become very friendly with him and often spoken to him of eternal matters, but like so many, he had no time for God. Yet, as we crossed the Channel that morning he was singing, with tears rolling down his cheeks, ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee’.

“Some hours later another RAMC lad and I were with a company of about 70 paratroopers. Just over half had reached the rendezvous. The objective had been taken, and everything had gone reasonably well until daybreak. Then the Germans began their counter-attack.

“Soon after this, we were cut off from the rest of the Battalion. The wireless had been damaged during the drop, so we had no means of communicating with them. Casualties were heavy and I felt helpless and lost. I cried unto the Lord.

“I crawled through the long grass to the Captain, now in command of the Company, the CO having been wounded, and asked permission to attempt to reach the Regimental Aid Pot for medical aid.

“Crawling a few yards and with the Germans in a house about 30 yards ahead of me, I felt nervous. I took out my pocket-Bible and lying on my stomach in the long grass, I read the 57th Psalm. By a direct route, the RAP was about three-quarters of a mile away, yet the journey took me two-and-a-half hours and I was fired on by a machine-gunner and by snipers.

“Looking back on that journey, I am certain God led me every step of the way.

“Ten days later I was wounded in both legs and my left arm. Nine days later still, I lay in the Royal Infirmary, Liverpool in serious danger of losing my left foot. People prayed for me and I am now walking about on both my own legs!’’

In hospital it was said Skelly brought seven nurses to God, one of whom went on to train as a missionary.

Eva Williams, now Elliott, was only a girl of 15 at the time, but well remembers going on the train with her dad, Joseph Williams, to the infirmary at Liverpool to visit cousin George.

“His mother Mary Ann (known as Molly) was my dad’s sister and sadly she had died just a few months before he won the Military Medal,” said Eva, of Trinity Court, Whitehaven. “Molly died in December 1943 and George got his medal in June, 1944. My dad was close to George and his two elder brothers, John and Joseph, and had always looked out for them. Dad worked on the railways so we got free travel to Liverpool. It was easier to travel by train then than it is now!”

Many readers will know of the late John Skelly of Kells, George’s brother. He too was a conscientious objector, but working at Haig Pit, was in a reserved occupation. John was known as the Miner’s Poet and died in 2002, aged 88. The three brothers, the children of James and Molly Skelly, lived in Mark Lane, near the harbour as children, before the family moved up to North Row, Kells.

George, born in 1919 attended the National School before gaining a place at the Selective Central School at Howgill Street. In 1935, at age 16 he was sent to London on a scheme for the unemployed under which he worked as a page in a public school (where he was made to change his Cumbrian accent!)

He was back in Whitehaven, working in the offices of West Cumberland Farmers when World War Two war broke out and conscription in 1939 saw him called up for service, aged just 20. George’s Christian beliefs forbade him to fight or kill his fellow man so he registered as a conscientious objector. He still had to go and serve, however, and soon found himself in the Medical Corps.

After the war he left West Cumbria to live in Harrogate, setting up in business as a jeweller and subsequently moved to Essex and finally Southampton, where he was to die in 1980, aged just 61. He was married to Eve, who still lives in Southampton. The couple’s daughter Pearl, 57, also lives in Southampton but was recently in Whitehaven visiting her aunt, Margaret Skelly (wife of the late John Skelly) at Kells.

George Skelly’s story was one that also intrigued Joseph Ritson of Valley Park, who recounted it as part of his university studies of the Battle of Normandy and also put George’s story on the BBC’s People’s War website.

Said Joseph: “There is a Dad’s Army episode entitled “Branded’’ where it was revealed that Private Godfrey was a Conscientious Objector in WWI, then joined the Medical Corps and was subsequently awarded the Military Medal, and I have sometimes wondered if the writers of the hit series had come across George Skelly’s story and based the episode on him.

“I have never come across a plaque to his memory, though,’’ added Joseph. “One of my uncles was also in the RAMC and served in Normandy in 1944. The Medical Corps people were right in the thick of all the horrors of war and the only protection they had was the Red Cross on their armbands, or sometimes a large Red Cross flag.

“Fortunately, according to my uncle, both sides tended to respect the Red Cross armbands when they could see they were retrieving casualties. But, of course, in the midst of ferocious fighting and shelling the armbands were not always that obvious.

“Anybody serving in the Medical Corps and going out into the open at the risk of his own life to help others, as George did, was certainly a brave soul.

“I gathered from John Skelly that brother George very rarely talked about being awarded the MM after the war.

“George may have been a Conscientious Objector, but he was certainly no coward but rather a quiet unassuming hero.’’

Elizabeth Gibb is still in pursuit of the elusive plaque. She says: “It is very interesting that the family of George Skelly have no knowledge of the plaque as I have again been in touch with my second cousin who told me about it... and he seems quite sure he saw it.

“This was in about 1958 when he and his classmates visited the Town Hall. He says it was in a downstairs room where there was a long table against a wall and at each side hung a plaque – one to Abraham Acton and the other to George Skelly. He says it was about 12ins x 10ins in size. His father, a cousin to George, had previously told him of its existence.

“The story becomes stranger and stranger! It would be good to solve this mystery.

“One of the great pleasures of doing family history research, however, is making contact with scattered family members and renewing ties.’’