VICTORIA CROSS WON IN KOREA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27213, 3 December 1953, Page 11

VICTORIA CROSS WON IN KOREA

Posthumous Award To British Officer LONDON. December 1. The Queen today awarded the fourth Victoria Cross of the Korean campaign to a young British officer who died in a single-handed attack on the Communists during the Imjin river battle in April. 1951. The official citation stated that Lieutenant Philip Kenneth Edward Curtis, though severely wounded, charged the enemy hurling hand grenades when his company of the Gloucestershire Regiment was threatened with encirclement. This action enabled the company to withdraw. Lieutenant Curtis, who was a member of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, attached to the Gloucesters, had been ordered to lead his outnumbered platoon against enemy positions. The counter-attack succeeded, but was held up eventually by heavy fire, and a fierce close-quarter engagement followed. Lieutenant Curtis told his men to give him covering fire, then rushed the main point of resistance. He was wounded and pulled back under cover, but broke free from the men restraining him, and attacked a second time. He was killed within a few yards of his objective. The citation stated that Lieutenant Curtis’s action ‘‘had a great effect on the subsequent course of the battle, and caused such a furious reaction” that the enemy made no further effort to exploit their success in the area. The citation added that Lieutenant Curtis’s action was “magnificent throughout this bitter battle.” Daughter’s Excitement Philippa Susan, aged six, the daughter of Lieutenant Philip Curtis, asked as soon as she received the news; “Does that mean I can go to Bucking-

ham Palace and see the Queen?” Whether Philippa Susan, who is an orphan, as her mother died four years ago, goes to the Palace or not, her two grandmothers have decided that she will eventually get her father’s Victoria Cross.

The hero’s widowed mother. Mrs Florence Curtis, of Devonport, Devonshire, said her son was “always a quiet boy—not one to be up to mischief.” The three previous winners of the Victoria Cross in Korea were Major Kenneth Muir (who was killed in action), Private William Speakman, and Lieutenant-Colonel J. P. Carne.