GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY
“My vehicle”. Thomas seated in front.
At this critical juncture in the battle, the assembled troops came under sustained and effective RPG and small arms fire from a new
undetected location of 15-20 enemy troops some 350 metres away. Realising that many of his comrades were now exposed, Lance
Corporal Thomas ran from his position of comparative safety and climbed onto his open top vehicle to man a pintle-mounted GPMG.
With his No.2 feeding ammunition and with no protection afforded by the vehicle, Lance Corporal Thomas single handedly returned a
heavy weight of sustained fire for a continuous period of nearly 15 minutes to enable 20 other members of his troop to safely move into
cover and to regroup. As small arms and RPG’s landed all around him, his determination to suppress the enemy did not waiver, nor did
his courage in the face of considerable threat to his own life. This singular act of selfless bravery ensured that his troop were able to
extract safely from effective enemy fire without loss in order to launch a successful counter attack. Had casualties been taken, the
progress on the Commando’s western flank would have been slowed and potentially placed the remainder of the Unit in a vulnerable
position. Lance Corporal Thomas’ section had a further three contacts that day as they set about achieving their mission, yet his
leadership and personal example were never found wanting.
Lance Corporal Thomas’ extreme bravery in the face of a well-armed and determined enemy undoubtedly saved numerous lives that
day and was fundamental to mission success. Throughout a demanding sequence of operations, his section’s performance has been
invariably impressive, due largely to his natural command presence. Categorically, his exceptional courage and inspirational leadership
under effective enemy fire deserve lasting public recognition.’
A chapter comprising a 17 page interview with Lance Corporal Thomas appears in the book In Foreign Fields, by Dan Brown, from
which the following in relation to the action for which he was awarded the C.G.C. is extracted: ‘They opened up with mortars at first.
They knew what they were doing: they wanted to keep our heads down, and mortars do that to you. It’s dispiriting stuff, mortar fire, like
artillery, because there’s often not much you can do except sit there and take it. It ceases to be amusing after about ten minutes and it
can actually break you. If they’re close, you might hear the shell going into the barrel, with a ‘dunk’ sound, or you might hear it
whistling through the air. Sometimes you can even see it. Then it whizzes in and there’s a ‘crump’ when it impacts. If it lands on a
road, you’re looking at death anywhere within 20 or 30 metres, possibly even further. If it lands in sand and mud, the blast radius is
much reduced, so we were immediately getting off the road and taking cover. Then they started hitting us with anti-tank rockets,
probably the Russian Spigot, which is a wire-guided thing not dissimilar to Milan – the missile is actually trailing a wire behind it, and
the operator watches through his scope and navigates it in to the target…
By now, there’s lots of small arms coming in. There’s a heavy machine gun firing at us from somewhere and they’ve got a sniper going
as well. And there are the RPGs. I remember, just above me there were some electricity wires and a lot of the RPGs were being fired
too high, coming in and hitting these cables. Sparks would be flying everywhere and these 3ft missiles would just spin off at crazy
angles and explode somewhere. Funnily enough, the lads were pissing themselves laughing about it all, despite how serious it was.
There was a British journalist with us – not attached, he got left with us by others – and I remember him saying how nuts he thought we
were. We were lying in these ditches, RPGs were just missing us, people were taking rounds in their day sacks, and we were all pissing
ourselves. It was just so funny - I can’t explain why, it just is for some reason.
But it was actually starting to look pretty bad. We’re still pinned down by the mortars. They’d suppressed us good and proper. A few of
the lads were trying to return off bits of fire with their personal weapons but we had our heads down so we couldn’t see the target and
were basically ineffective. I never thought they’d overrun us, because they’d have had to come into the open and stop their own fire,
and we’d have cut them to pieces. But it was only going to end one way at this rate: sooner or later, those mortars or the RPGs or the
sniper or the machine gun were going to find us and we’d start taking serious casualties…
I thought, Hang on…there’s nobody firing here. They’re hammering us, and that’s wrong. So I ran to the nearest wagon and just
climbed up on to it and started looking for them, basically. As soon as I was up there, I could see where some of their firing points were
and I was able to engage them with the GPMG. Just putting a belt of ammunition on and hosing it down. Picking where I was firing,
and giving it a good long burst, either until the belt ran out or the gun had a stoppage. Stoppages are the nature of the beast with a belt-
fed weapon - it can be a case not extracting properly, or a bit of link falling down into the working parts, or a problem with the
propellant…the GPMG fires better dirty, with bits of carbon on the gas regulator, but you still get stoppages. So I’d clear it, start again
and carry on until I ran out of the belt…
www.dnw.co.uk
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