VICTORIA CROSS AWARD TO BRAVE BRITISH OFFICER

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 May 1949, Page 6

VICTORIA CROSS AWARD TO BRAVE BRITISH OFFICER

LONDON, May 20 (Rec. 11 a.m.). —One of the most remarkable deeds of heroism in the war against the Japanese received recognition tonight when the London Gazette announced that the Victoria Cross had been awarded posthumously to Lieutenant George Albert Cairns, of the Somerset Light Infantry. On March 13, 1944, Lieutenant Cairns led an attack against a hilltop at Broadway, in Burma, from which the Japanese were launching heavy attacks against the British positions. A Japanese officer hacked off Cairns’s left arm with his sword. Despite this dreadful injury, Cairns killed the Japanese officer, picked up his sword, and leaped at a group of Japanese soldiers. He killed and wounded several Japanese before he fell mortally wounded. His action so inspired his men that the Japanese were completely routed. Then began a five-year fight for recognition of Cairns’s gallantry. Records of the action with the evidence of three witnesses were lost when General Wingate died in an aircraft crash. Two witnesses had been killed when the matter was reopened. A former infantry brigade commander in Burma, Major Calvert, had the case reopened six weeks ag<x