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| Page revised: 15 January, 2008 |
Second Lieutenant Cecil Leonard KNOX VC |
| Born: | Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England - 9 May 1888 | 
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| Died: | Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England - 4 February 1943 | ||
| Burial details: | Cremated at Leicester; ashes scattered in home at Fyves Court, Caldecote, Nuneaton. | ||
| Corps service: | He was commissioned into the Corps in June 1917 and after training was posted to 150 Field Company. After the war he went into the family business with his brother Kenneth, who also served with the Corps and won a MC. Between the wars he joined the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and suffered from a serious parachute accident. He joined the Home Guard at the beginning of the Second World War (1939-45). | ||
| VC awarded: | Won VC at Tugny, France, on 22 March 1918 (First World War 1914-18) | ||
| VC unit: | 150 Field Company | ||
| VC presented: | VC presented by King George V at Oxelaere, northern France, on 6 August 1918. | ||
| VC citation: | For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. Twelve
bridges were entrusted to this officer for demolition, and all of
them were successfully destroyed. In the case of one steel girder
bridge, the destruction of which he personally supervised, the time
fuse failed to act. Without hesitation, Second Lieutenant Knox ran
to the bridge, under heavy fire and machine gunfire, and when the
enemy were actually on the bridge he tore away the time fuse and lit
the instantaneous fuse, to do which he had to get under the bridge.
This was an act of the highest devotion to duty, entailing the greatest
risks, which as a practical civil engineer, he fully realised. (London Gazette: 4 June 1918) |
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| VC location: | Privately held | ||
| Source:
Additional material: SC Fenwick, FoREM Links to further reading:
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Royal Engineers Museum main site
