George Ward Gunn

Fought enemy tanks with an anti-tank gun on a burning truck.

George Ward Gunn grew up in Neston, Cheshire, and trained as an accountant before volunteering for the Army in 1939. Commissioned in 1940, he served with J Battery, 3rd Royal Horse Artillery, in the Western Desert. His gallantry during earlier fighting earned the Military Cross.

On 21 November 1941, at Sidi Rezegh in Libya, Gunn commanded four anti-tank guns facing a major German tank attack. He drove between the guns in an unarmoured vehicle, encouraging their crews and reorganising the defence as weapons were destroyed.

With only one gun remaining, mounted on a burning truck, he ran through intense fire to bring it back into action. Gunn aimed the weapon while a sergeant loaded it. Ignoring both enemy fire and flames threatening the ammunition, he fired between forty and fifty rounds, setting at least two tanks ablaze and damaging others. He continued until a shot killed him.

The Victoria Cross was awarded posthumously. Gunn was twenty-nine and is buried in Knightsbridge War Cemetery, Libya.

Victoria Cross citation: On the 21st November, 1941, at Sidi Rezegh, Second-Lieutenant Gunn was in command of a troop of four anti-tank guns which was part of a battery of twelve guns attached to the Rifle Brigade Column. At 10.00 hours a covering force of enemy tanks was engaged and driven off but an hour later the main attack developed by about sixty enemy tanks. Second-Lieutenant Gunn drove from gun to gun during this period in an unarmoured vehicle encouraging his men and reorganising his dispositions as first one gun and then another were knocked out. Finally only two guns remained in action and were subjected to very heavy fire. Immediately afterwards one of these guns was destroyed and the portee of another was set on fire and all the crew killed or wounded except the Sergeant, though the gun itself remained undamaged. The Battery Commander then arrived and started to fight the flames. When he saw this, Second- Lieutenant Gunn ran to his aid through intense fire and immediately got the one remaining anti-tank gun into action on the burning portee, himself sighting it while the Sergeant acted as loader. He continued to fight the gun, firing between forty and fifty rounds regardless alike of the enemy fire which was by then concentrated on this one vehicle, and of the flames which might at any moment have reached the ammunition with which the portee was loaded. In spite of this, Second-Lieutenant Gunn’s shooting was so accurate at a range of about 800 yards that at least two enemy tanks were hit and set on fire and others were damaged before he fell dead, having been shot through the forehead. Second-Lieutenant Gunn showed the most conspicuous courage in attacking this large number of enemy tanks with a single unarmoured gun, and his utter disregard for extreme danger was an example which inspired all who saw it. He remained undismayed by intense fire and overwhelming odds, and his gallant resistance only ceased with his death. But for this very gallant action the enemy tanks would undoubtedly have over-run our position.

Second Supplement to The London Gazette of 17 April 1942. 21 April 1942, Numb. 35530, p. 1741