Appendix I
Second-Lieutenant Upham VC and Bar
Charles Hazlitt Upham won the Victoria Cross in Crete in May 1941 and again at Ruweisat Ridge in Egypt’s Western Desert during the equally dark days of July 1942. He was only the third person to receive the VC and Bar, the only man to do so during the Second World War and the only combat soldier to receive the award twice. The others are Captains Arthur Martin-Leake and Noel Chavasse, both of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Boer War/Great War.
Charles Upham was born in Christchurch, New Zealand on September 21 1908. He was educated at Christ’s College, Canterbury and Canterbury Agricultural College where he earned a diploma in agriculture. He worked first as a sheep farmer, later as manager, and then as farm valuer for the New Zealand Government.
On the outbreak of war, Upham volunteered for service, saying he ‘wanted to fight for justice’. He enlisted in the 20th NZ Battalion and left for Egypt with the advance party of the 2nd NZEF in December 1939 in the rank of sergeant. He was commissioned in November 1940.
8077 SECOND-LIEUTENANT CHARLES HAZLITT UPHAM
During the operations in Crete this officer performed a series of remarkable exploits, showing outstanding leadership, tactical skill and utter indifference to danger. He commanded a forward platoon in the attack on Maleme on May 22 and fought his way forward for over 3000 yards unsupported by any other arms and against a defence strongly organised in depth. During this operation his platoon destroyed numerous enemy posts but on three occasions sections were temporarily held up.
In the first case, under a heavy fire from an MG nest he advanced to close quarters with pistol and grenades, so demoralising the occupants that his section was able to ‘mop up’ with ease. Another of his sections was then held up by two MGs in a house. He went in and placed a grenade through a window, destroying the crew of one MG and several others, the other MG being silenced by the fire of his sections. In the third case he crawled to within 15 yards of an MG post and killed the gunners with a grenade.
When his Company withdrew from Maleme he helped to carry a wounded man out under fire, and together with another officer rallied more men together to carry other wounded men out. He was then sent to bring in a Company which had become isolated. With a corporal he went through enemy territory over 600 yards, killing two Germans on the way, found the Company, and brought it back to the Battalion’s new position. But for this action it would have been completely cut off.
During the following two days his platoon occupied an exposed position on forward slopes and was continuously under fire. 2/Lieut. Upham was blown over by one mortar shell and painfully wounded by a piece of shrapnel behind the left shoulder by another. He disregarded this wound and remained on duty. He also received a bullet in the foot which he later removed in Egypt.
At Galatos on May 25 his platoon was heavily engaged when troops in front gave way and came under severe Mortar and MG fire. While his platoon stopped under cover of a ridge 2/Lieut. Upham went forward, observed the enemy and brought the platoon forward when the Germans advanced. They killed over 40 with fire and grenades and forced the remainder to fall back.
When his platoon was ordered to retire he sent it back under the platoon Sjt and he went back to warn other troops that they were being cut off. When he came out himself he was fired on by two Germans. He fell and shammed dead, then crawled into a position and having the use of only one arm he rested his rifle in the fork of a tree and as the Germans came forward he killed them both. The second to fall actually hit the muzzle of the rifle as he fell.
On 30th May at Sphakia his platoon was ordered to deal with a party of the enemy which had advanced down a ravine to near Force Headquarters. Though in an exhausted condition he climbed the steep hill to the west of the ravine, placed his men in positions on the slope overlooking the ravine and himself went to the top with a Bren Gun and two riflemen. By clever tactics he induced the enemy party to expose itself and then at a range of 500 yards shot 22 and caused the remainder to disperse in panic.
During the whole of the operations he suffered from diarrhoea and was able to eat very little, in addition to being wounded and bruised.
He showed superb coolness, great skill and dash and complete disregard of danger. His conduct and leadership inspired his whole platoon to fight magnificently throughout, and in fact was an inspiration to the battalion.
Sergeant Alfred Hulme VC
In 1941 Alfred Clive Hulme was a 30-yearold Provost Sergeant in 23 NZ Battalion (The Canterbury Regiment), detatched to the Force Punishment Centre. During the period 20/28 May 1941, Sergeant Hulme displayed outstanding leadership and courage. At Maleme he led a party of soldiers under sentence against the Fallschirmjäger who had landed in the force Punishment Centre’s area. Later, at Galatas, he drove the enemy away from a school building with hand grenades. At Souda Bay he killed five snipers and at Stylos he wiped out a mortar crew and accounted for three more snipers.
In 2006, law professor Bill Hodge argued that one of Hulme’s actions was a ‘prima facie war crime’, having broken the rules of war by wearing German uniform when hunting snipers. The battalion history describes Hulme’s actions:
Most of his outstanding efforts were made alone or with small patrols and did not fit into any unit action. They were typical of this man who sought so frequently to fight a one-man war. Hulme was the battalion Provost Sergeant from early 1940 onwards. In his official capacity he was assisting Lieutenant Roach of 21 Battalion to run a Field Punishment Centre east of the 23rd’s area and south-west of Platanias when the Germans began to land on 20 May.
At first Hulme and the other members of the Field Punishment Centre were busy dealing with the parachutists dropping in their area. Later, Lieutenant Roach reported that the Germans gave some trouble but ‘Sgt. Hulme got cracking – very aggressively. He stood in full view of any German and fired bursts into any suspected places and that closed up the odd burst of fire’. Sometimes alone and sometimes with another – for example, on two occasions he had Private Shatford with him – Hulme went out and dealt with enemy riflemen. Stalking them carefully, he almost invariably got his man. Roach’s report shows how much one determined infantryman could dominate an area when it says: ‘Hulme used to wander about a lot – from the camp to the road was all his country.’ Hulme himself claimed no special credit for the manner in which the Punishment Centre men cleaned up their area but 126 German dead were counted in that general area. Reporting in to 5 Brigade Headquarters on one occasion with some marked maps, Hulme was detailed by Brigadier Hargest to deal with a sniper, whom he stalked and shot.
Hulme returned to the 23rd the day before the unit left its area near Maleme. By this time he had acquired two items from parachutists he had shot which gave him some protection on his stalking patrols and may possibly have misled the Germans. These were a camouflage suit or blouse which he wore over his battledress tunic and a camouflage hat, which could be worn either rolled up like a balaclava or down in a hood, with eye-slits, over the face. He killed two other Germans before the order to withdraw came. On a visit to Brigade Headquarters, he ran into a small party of New Zealand engineers held prisoner by one German sentry. Afraid to shoot for fear of hitting a New Zealander, Hulme crept up behind the sentry, jumped on him and killed him with a short German bayonet. Directed to find out how many Germans were in Pirgos, Hulme ran into two unguarded aircraft which he set on fire with German fusee matches.
After Galatas, Hulme heard that his brother, Corporal ‘Blondie’ Hulme, of 19 Battalion, had been killed. Determined to avenge his brother, Hulme dropped behind the withdrawing unit and, taking up a position covering a food dump, waited till the leading Germans arrived. Before this patrol pulled back, Hulme shot three of them.
During a conference of senior officers, including Australian and British, at 5 Brigade Headquarters behind 42nd Street, German snipers sent bullets whistling over. Hulme volunteered to deal with the trouble. He climbed the hillside from which the Germans were firing, came out above four Germans, and shot the leader. He was wearing his camouflage suit at the time and, when the Germans looked round to see where the shooting was coming from, Hulme also looked round, giving the impression he was one of them. When the men below him looked down again, he quickly picked off two of them and then shot the fourth as he moved up towards him. Afifth he shot as he came round the side of the hill towards him. Most of these proceedings were watched by Major Thomason through his binoculars.
Sergeant Hulme’s official citation says that he ‘made his score thirty-three enemy snipers stalked and shot’. It adds: ‘Sergeant Hulme’s Brigadier, in supporting the recommendation for the award of the Victoria Cross, states that during the whole of the fighting until he was wounded, Sergeant Hulme conducted himself with such courage that the story of his exploits was on everyone’s lips.’ That this was true of the commanding officer of the 23rd may be seen from Lieutenant Thomas’s account of a visit from Colonel Leckie in the dressing station behind Galatas: ‘Colonel Leckie limped over to see me. He stayed and talked with me for some time, speaking sadly of the Battalion’s casualties and proudly of its showing throughout the fighting. He spoke at length of Sgt. Hulme who … had done wonders.’