Samuel Harvey (VC)

Private Samuel Harvey VC

Samuel Harvey was born on 17 September 1881 at Basford, Nottinghamshire, one of nine children of William and Mary Harvey. His family moved to Ipswich while he was still young, and he grew up in modest circumstances before working as a labourer and entering the British Army. After earlier service, he reenlisted in 1905 and eventually joined the 1st Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment as Private 8273. He served for several years in India before being transferred to the Army Reserve and recalled for active service shortly before the First World War. (VC and GC Association)

By September 1915, Harvey was serving on the Western Front during the Battle of Loos. On 29 September, his battalion was defending the captured German position known as “Big Willie” Trench, near the formidable Hohenzollern Redoubt. The fighting had become a close-range struggle fought largely with hand grenades, then commonly called bombs, and the British defenders were rapidly exhausting their supply.

More bombs were urgently needed, but the communication trench leading to the front was blocked by wounded soldiers moving rearward and reinforcements pressing forward. Harvey volunteered to retrieve the ammunition. Unable to use the congested trench, he repeatedly crossed open ground under intense enemy fire, carrying boxes of grenades to his comrades. He completed the journey again and again, eventually bringing forward no fewer than thirty boxes before he was struck in the head by a bullet. (VC and GC Association)

Harvey survived his terrible wound. His official Victoria Cross citation concluded:

“It was largely owing to his cool bravery in supplying the bombs that the enemy was eventually driven back.”

His award was announced in the London Gazette on 16 November 1915. (The Gazette) Harvey later received the Victoria Cross from King George V at Buckingham Palace in January 1917. He continued serving despite his wounds and was reportedly wounded several more times before being honourably discharged from the Army on 15 May 1918. (Ipswich War Memorial)

In addition to the Victoria Cross, Harvey received the 1914–15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal, King George VI Coronation Medal and Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. He was also honoured by France as a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and by Imperial Russia with the Cross of St George, 4th Class. (Ipswich War Memorial)

Harvey’s life after the war was marked by poverty, physical disability and what would now likely be recognized as lasting psychological trauma. He carried a limp and reportedly still had the bullet lodged dangerously close to his brain. He found intermittent employment as a gardener, odd-job worker and ostler at the Great White Horse Hotel in Ipswich. One resident remembered hearing him mutter, “Dig that trench,” repeatedly while working in a garden. (Ipswich War Memorial)

As the years passed, Harvey struggled with alcohol and homelessness. He sometimes lived in a hut in Wolves Wood, slept on the steps of Ipswich Town Hall and stayed at a Salvation Army hostel. His original Victoria Cross and full-sized medal group disappeared during these difficult years, although the precise circumstances remain unknown. Stories that he traded or pawned the Cross have never been conclusively established. (Wikipedia)

Samuel Harvey died in hospital at Stowmarket, Suffolk, on 23 September 1960, six days after his seventy-ninth birthday. Miniature medals were reportedly found beneath or beside his pillow. He was buried in Ipswich Old Cemetery in a grave that remained without a permanent headstone for four decades. (Wikipedia)

On 29 September 2000, exactly eighty-five years after his Victoria Cross action, a headstone was dedicated over his grave through the efforts of his former regiment, the Western Front Association and local supporters. At last, the soldier who had crossed open ground thirty times so that his comrades might survive had his name permanently restored above him. (Great War Forum)

Samuel Harvey’s story is not only one of extraordinary battlefield courage. It is also a reminder of the hardship endured by many veterans after the cheering stopped and the uniforms were put away. His Victoria Cross recognized a few hours of exceptional bravery, but his difficult life afterward reveals the much longer cost of war.