Harry Nicholls

Silenced three machine guns with a Bren despite four wounds.

Harry Nicholls was born on 21 April 1915 in Nottingham's Meadows district. He attended Bosworth Road School and worked for Burroughs Adding Machines after leaving school in 1929. He enlisted in the Grenadier Guards in June 1936 and joined the 3rd Battalion. A talented boxer, he represented the Army and won the Imperial Services heavyweight amateur championship in 1938. He married Constance in 1937 and had a young family when war began.

By September 1939 he was a lance-corporal. His battalion went to France with the British Expeditionary Force, then advanced into Belgium after the German invasion in May 1940. As the Allies withdrew, the Grenadiers took positions near Esquelmes on the River Escaut, also called the Scheldt, north of Tournai.

On 21 May, Nicholls commanded a section during his company's counter-attack against German troops who had crossed the river. Shrapnel wounded his arm at the outset, but he continued forward. When close-range machine-gun fire threatened the advance, he seized a Bren gun and rushed the enemy positions. Supported with ammunition by Guardsman Percy Nash, he silenced three machine guns, then fired on infantry beyond a higher ridge until his ammunition ran out. Despite at least four wounds, he helped his company reach its objective and force the enemy back across the river.

Left unconscious on the battlefield, he was found alive by the Germans and captured. Fellow prisoner Guardsman Herbert Henry Smith cared for him before hospital treatment. Nicholls was reported killed, and the Victoria Cross announced on 30 July 1940 repeated that report. King George VI presented the medal to his wife on 6 August. In September, the family learned through the Red Cross that he was alive.

He remained a prisoner of war, held in Poland including Stalag XXB, until the closing months of the war. The prisoners were moved west into Germany in 1945. After liberation and repatriation that spring, Nicholls returned to Nottingham. The King presented his Victoria Cross personally at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1945.

He left the Army in April 1946. His injuries complicated his return to civilian employment, including work as a boxing instructor at Butlin's holiday camp in Filey. From 1947 to 1952 he lived with his family in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and worked for the Standard Bank of South Africa. Returning to Britain, he later lived in London and then Leeds. He married Grace in 1971. Nicholls died in Leeds on 11 September 1975, aged 60, and was buried with his parents at Nottingham's Southern Cemetery, Wilford Hill. His Victoria Cross was preserved by the Grenadier Guards at Wellington Barracks.

Official Victoria Cross citation The London Gazette, Third Supplement, 30 July 1940, pages 4659-4660:

No. 2614910 Lance-corporal Harry NICHOLLS, Grenadier Guards.

On the 21st May, 1940, Lance-corporal Nicholls was commanding a section in the right-forward platoon of his company when the company was ordered to counter-attack. At the very start of the advance he was wounded in the arm by shrapnel, but continued to lead his section forward; as the company came over a small ridge, the enemy opened heavy machine-gun fire at close range.

Lance-corporal Nicholls, realising the danger to the company, immediately seized a Bren gun and dashed forward towards the machine-guns, firing from the hip. He succeeded in silencing first one machine-gun and then two other machine-guns, in spite of being again severely wounded.

Lance-corporal Nicholls then went on up to a higher piece of ground and engaged the German infantry massed behind, causing many casualties, and continuing to fire until he had no more ammunition left.

He was wounded at least four times in all, but absolutely refused to give in. There is no doubt that his gallant action was instrumental in enabling his company to reach its objective, and in causing the enemy to fall back across the River Scheldt.

Lance-corporal Nicholls has since been reported to have been killed in action.