Frank North RIP

Kyt · Sep 4, 2008

Frank North - Telegraph

Frank North, who has died aged 93, was awarded the George Medal for rescuing a soldier from a minefield in Kent.

On August 27 1943 North, a corporal, was serving as a medical orderly with No 2806 Squadron of the RAF Regiment at an airfield on Romney Marsh when a call for help was received from the Army. A platoon of soldiers on a route march had strayed into a defensive minefield and been blown up.

With another orderly and an ambulance driver, he rushed to the scene. The three men, carrying a stretcher, had to make their way through barbed wire defences, wade across the Hythe canal in water up to their chests and then enter the minefield, where they found four soldiers who had been blown up and another seriously injured.

The injured man was lying on the edge of a large crater. North administered morphine and helped to bring the casualty back across the canal and into an ambulance, which he then followed to the hospital, where the soldier later died. The Army recommended North and his two comrades for the George Medal.

An only child, Frank Robert North was born at Plaistow, Essex, on November 9 1914. He won a scholarship to the local grammar school before training to be an accountant.

When it became clear that war was inevitable, North decided to serve in a life-saving role, partly driven by his religious beliefs and partly by his admiration for the stretcher-bearers of the First World War.

He joined an Essex branch of the British Red Cross and, when the London Blitz began, he volunteered for night work at Queen Mary's Hospital in the East End. As the Battle of Britain reached its climax he joined the RAF as a medical orderly.

North served on various RAF airfields in England before being sent to No 2806 Squadron, then in tented accommodation at RAF Lympne.

North remained with the squadron, which became an armoured car unit, throughout the war, serving with it in France, Holland and Germany.

In Normandy he performed another, but unrecognised, act of gallantry when he went into a German minefield to rescue and tend to a French farmer whose tractor had hit a mine.

During the dash through Holland and Germany to secure advanced landing grounds and airfields, North established his own first aid post and, seeing a doctor only rarely, regularly found himself treating the sick. At the end of the war, his unit had passed through Luneburg and was based in Schleswig-Holstein.

North was released from the RAF in June 1946 and returned to his old firm as an accountant. He finally retired when he was 70. He derived much enjoyment from painting and studying history, and he found great comfort in membership of the church.

Frank North, who died on August 7, married his wife Grace in 1943. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their three daughters.
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