Details
Hunter was 21 years old, and a temporary corporal in 43 (RM) Commando during the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy during the Second World War when the following incident took place. He was awarded the VC for his actions during Operation Roast.
On 2 April 1945 at Lake Comacchio, Italy, Corporal Hunter, who was in charge of a Bren gun section, offered himself as a target to save his troop. Seizing the Bren gun, he charged alone across 200 yards of open ground under most intense fire towards a group of houses where three MG 42 machine-guns were lodged. So determined was his charge that the enemy soldiers were demoralized and six gunners surrendered. The remainder fled. Hunter cleared the house, changing magazines as he ran and continued to draw enemy fire until most of the troop had reached cover, Hunter was killed, firing accurately to the last. Danish national, Major Anders Lassen of the Special Boat Service (SBS) was also awarded a VC posthumously in the same action.
Read more about this topic: Tom Hunter (VC)
Famous quotes containing the word details:
“Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One must seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price that a man must pay for a high station.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Then he told the news media
the strange details of his death
and they hammered him up in the marketplace
and sold him and sold him and sold him.
My death the same.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“If my sons are to become the kind of men our daughters would be pleased to live among, attention to domestic details is critical. The hostilities that arise over housework...are crushing the daughters of my generation....Change takes time, but men’s continued obliviousness to home responsibilities is causing women everywhere to expire of trivialities.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)