Miscellaneous 562
The Wellington College King’s Prize Medal for 1912 awarded to Colonel H. B. Stokes, C.B.E., M.B.E., Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, who was seriously wounded by shellfire on the Somme in 1916 and was fortunate to survive the sinking of the Lancastria off St. Nazaire in 1940
Wellington College King’s Prize Medal, G.V.R., 45mm, gold (22ct., 45.0g) (Herbert Bland Stokes 1912) in Royal Mint case of issue, extremely fine
£1,800-£2,200
C.B.E. (Civil) London Gazette 1 January 1959: ‘Colonel Herbert Bland Stokes, M.B.E., Chairman, Board of Governors, Bristol United Hospitals.
M.B.E. (Military) London Gazette 11 July 1940. The Queen’s / King’s Medal, Wellington College
The first Speech Day [at Wellington College] took place in June 1859, just six months after the College opened, and may have been modelled on similar events at Rugby School. It included two Chapel services as well as the prize-giving ceremony. We don’t know what prizes were given, but by the next year Queen Victoria had consented to give the Queen’s Medal, awarded ever since [a King’s Medal awarded during a King’s reign]. The original statutes, now on display in College, state that this was to encourage students to emulate the virtues of the Great Duke in whose honour the College is founded. The list of good qualities required of the winner is considerable, and includes Cheerful submission to superiors, unselfish good fellowship with equals… a readiness to forgive offences towards himself… and above all, fearless devotion to duty and unflinching truthfulness. In the early years, the Master, teachers and prefects would consult with one another as to who was the most worthy winner of this prize. However, for many years now it has been awarded to the Head of School. (Wellington College Records refer)
Herbert Bland Stokes was born at Salem, Madras, India, on 7 April 1894, the youngest son of Sir Gabriel Stokes, K.C.S.I., and May Florence (née Fuller) and was educated at Wellington College where he was the recipient of the prestigious King’s Prize Medal. Having obtained a commission in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on 23 September 1914, he was advanced Captain in May 1915, subsequently appointed Staff Captain and Adjutant and embarked for France in January 1916 where he served as Brigade Bombing Officer. Stokes was very severely wounded by shellfire on the Somme on 10 April 1916 and, returning England, was put on light duties until the war’s end, demobilised, with permanent rank of Captain, on 9 January 1919, and awarded a Silver War Badge. However, on 3 September 1939, following the renewal of hostilities, he insisted on rejoining the Army, in his old rank of Captain, at the age of 45.
On 16 September, Stokes left for France with the British Expeditionary Force. Officially his Regiment was the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, but the Army recognised his experience as the Chief Executive of Queen Charlotte's hospital in London, and based him in Dieppe organising medical supplies, which came under the general heading of the Quartermaster General. By mid-May as the German Blitzkrieg was sweeping through Belgium, Stokes’ letters indicate the evacuation of medical staff from Dieppe to points further west; the last letter he wrote from France, nearly a week after Dunkirk, describes ‘a wonderful old watering-place’ - probably Deauville. Now in the rear party, Stokes was charged with seeing all medical personnel and patients across the Channel. Around the 7 June, his camp moved to Nantes, a town some 30 miles inland from the port of St Nazaire. On Saturday 15 June the order came through that the camp was to be evacuated within seven hours. Stokes got everyone safely away, and, having waited behind for two officers to return from reconnoitring, he finally made the move from Nantes to St. Nazaire and scrambled aboard H.M.T. Lancastria at 10:00 a.m. on 17 June.
Operation Aerial - Last out of France
Operation Aerial, the codename for the rescue of Allied troops left in France after Dunkirk, freed 163,000 people, on a scale comparable to Operation Dynamo, but it received little publicity. Over 150,000 troops were still in France two weeks after Dunkirk was all over, and while the Nazis were already strutting about in Paris, many of these troops left behind were sadly killed or taken prisoner, but a large number of Army units were ordered to evacuate from other ports further west. Unlike at Dunkirk they were not yet at immediate risk from land attack by the Germans, but they certainly were at risk from the air. One of those ports, St Nazaire, became the scene of the worst loss of life that Britain has ever suffered from one vessel. This was the sinking of one of the ships involved in the rescue, the Lancastria. For the sake of morale the whole episode was completely hushed up.
Sinking of the Lancastria - ‘A Definitely Unpleasant Show’
At 3:50 p.m. on 17 June, the Luftwaffe bombed the Lancastria, crammed with thousands people, off St. Nazaire, holing her below the waterline, causing her to list rapidly and discharge 1,400 tons of oil into the sea. Hundreds of men who had not eaten for days were making their way below decks to the restaurant areas. Moments later, a second bomb penetrated a forward hatch and exploded. Some men died in the water, burning in the oil-slick onto which the Germans had dropped incendiaries; others broke their necks jumping from the ship. Within 25 minutes the Lancastria, listing ever more steeply, turned completely upside down with men still clinging to her hull, and sunk with at least 5,000 casualties, possibly many more. The Luftwaffe continued attacking even after that, so that other vessels were unable to go to immediate aid.
Stokes was picked up after one and a half hours in the water clinging to a lifebelt with four other men. With typical understatement, he wrote shortly afterwards from Devonport Hospital, ‘There is very little wrong with me except some twisting of the back and the effect of an hour and a half’s swim after the Boche had got our ship with a couple of eggs. Thank Heaven I saw all the hospitals and personnel in our charge away without being bombed on the 15th. I and the others, very few left, got on board on the 17th, but we did not have the luck, as ours was the only boat they got. A definitely unpleasant show.’
It is now known that by noon on the 17th June, the Lancastria had between 7,500 to 9,000 people on board, grossly overloading her. Of this number, exactly 2,447 survived. Simple subtraction shows that the dead therefore numbered between 5,000 and 6,500, but no one will ever know for sure as no one knows exactly how many were aboard. There were only 2,000 lifejackets. Despite the overall success of Operation Aerial, the losses caused Churchill to order the news to be suppressed, so the story is in danger of remaining a forgotten footnote. ‘The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today,’ he wrote. Also he did not want to take the edge off the ‘Finest Hour’ broadcast speech which he was preparing. Stokes’ son, Adrian later wrote that his only memory of the episode is of his father showing him a gleaming pair of shoes, polished ready for his return to duty. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘considering they spent some time in the sea.’
Stokes was awarded the M.B.E. in July 1940 and remained in England for the rest of the war. He was rapidly promoted to Major and then Lieutenant Colonel and on 1 October 1943 he was appointed Colonel in charge of Administration in the South Midland District. He was granted the rank of Honorary Colonel on demobilisation on 24 August 1945 and was created a C.B.E. in 1959.
Details largely extracted from ‘A Definitely Unpleasant Show’ by Adrian and Teresa Stokes.
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