HOUSEWIFE-DRIVER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 249, 2 August 1941, Page 6

HOUSEWIFE-DRIVER.

AWARDED THE GEORGE MEDAL. INVESTITURE AT THE PALACE. LONDON, June 4. A housewife, Mrs Dorothy Clarke, of Suffolk, whose wartime job is to drive an ambulance, was the first woman to receive the George Medal from the King at a Buckingham Palace investiture^ Mrs Clarke and her attendant, Mrs Jane Hepburn, who also received the George Medal, were honoured for bravery in rescuing two soldiers who had been in a bomb explosion. Despite a warning that other explosions might take place at once, they walked calmly to the place where the men lay and carried them away on stretchei’s.

No fewer than 195 men and women received the medal from the King. Among them was Captain John Cunningham, of the Luton Home Guard, hero of one of the most daring escapes from German prison camps in the last war. He is now a factory defence inspector. Details of his bravery must be kept secret. He dealt with a certain type of enemy bomb —the public has < already a name for it. Captain Cunningham, who won the D. 5.0., was one of the officers who, with tablfe knives, spoons and forks, dug a 150 ft-long tunnel from Holzminden camp in 1918. Twenty-nine officers escaped. “I was one of the unlucky ones,’ said Captain Cunningham. “The tunnel collapse and I was caught.” With him was his wife, whose row of ribbons denoting service with the U.S. army in France in the. last war, attracted much attention.

Mrs V. N. Moss, of Siddeley Avenue, Coventry, left her washing to go to Buckingham Palace to see the King decorate her hero husband with the I George Cross. Her husband, a special constable, showed conspicuous gallantry during the Coventry raids. Replying to a speech by Alderman J. A. Moseley at a reception in Coventry, Mr Moss said: “My wife sits in the shelter alone with our two chilren. She. should have had the medal "Ly,*