Awards for the East Anglian Royal Engineers

Corporal H. Bryan DCM

Tuesday 9th March 1915: Readers will remember that on 20th February the 1st East Anglian Field Company, Royal Engineers assisted in an attack on a German trench at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée. We have just heard that Lieutenant C. H. Humphreys, who was wounded, has been awarded the Military Cross. A greater honour falls to Corporal H. Bryan, just 19, of Number 3 Section who has been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (the other ranks' version of the Distinguished Service Order and only one down in merit from the Victoria Cross).

Lieutenant Humphreys’ citation reads: “when leading the Royal Engineers, which accompanied a storming party, he was wounded by shrapnel in the first few yards of the advance, but continued with his men into the German trench and assisted in driving them out with bombs”.

Corporal Bryan’s award, we understand, was for his actions in the retirement from the German trench. It was then only dusk and in the race back the Royal Engineers came under a deadly fire and volunteers were asked for to bring in the wounded which lay between the two lines of trenches. Bryan mounted the parapet in front of his trench and brought in a wounded comrade. He repeated this performance three times, bringing in a member of the South Staffordshire Regiment as well as Royal Engineers until, thoroughly exhausted, he fell back in his own trench, fortunately without having been hit. His father, J Bryan of 12 Dane Street, Bedford is himself an old soldier(1)

Source: Bedfordshire Times, 12th March 1915

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(1) Sadly Sergeant Bryan, as he then was, died on 28th July 1916 and is buried at Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery.