HEROIC ACTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24430, 16 October 1940, Page 9

HEROIC ACTION

SEAMAN V.C. BROTHER WITH N.Z.E.F. (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON. Aug. 12. “ He always hated pain.” That brief comment by the mother of Southampton’s hero—Acting Leading Seaman Jack Foreman Mantle. H.M.S. Foylebank—throws a vivid light on the London Gazette description of the deed which won the first Victoria Cross awarded to a lower deck rating in this war. Mantle was in charge of the starboard pom-pom, when the Foylebank was attacked by enemy aircraft on July 4, 1940. Early in the action his left leg was shattered by a bomb, but

he stood fast at his gun. and went on firing with hand-gear only, for the ship’s electric power had failed. Almost at once he was wounded again in many places. Between his bursts of fire he had time to reflect on the grievous injuries of which he was soon to die: but his great courage bore him up till the end of the fight, when he fell by the gun he had so valiantly served. The Mantles live in a little house in Malvern road, Shirley, a suburb of the port. Jack’s father. Lisle John Mantle, works in the„ office of Southampton’s borough engineer. There are six in the Mantle family. There is Peter, who went 11 years ago to New Zealand —and reached England with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force a month or so ago. There is Pauline, a nurse in London; 18-year-old Michael, a despatch-rider for the Home Guard: Sheila, who helps her mother keep house; and 14-year-old Barbara, still at school. The Mantle children will eagerly talk of their hero-brother: of his quiet, soli-

tary ways as a boy. of his repeated aspiration to “ go to New Zealand and see Peter,” of how he used to walk along the quays and come home with stories of the giant liners, and of how he. too, would some day “ go to sea.” “Afraid of the Dentist” “He was such a quiet, earnest boy,” said Mrs Mantle. “He never was brilliant at school. He used to laugh a lot at little jokes. “But he had an intense dislike of pain, both to himself and others. . , . He was always afraid of the dentist.” “Always afraid of the dentist. . . .” One begins to see the true worth of those laconic words in the Gazette . . “ he had time to reflect on the grievous injuries of which he was soon to die. ...” His old headmaster at Taunton’s. Mr F. J. Hemmings, said: “I remember him as one of those quiet, unobtrusive boys, who always do what is expected of them.”