Five: Lieutenant G. St. A. Vivian, Royal Engineers, attached Bengal Sappers and Miners, who distinguished himself at the Battle of Ortana, 5-13 December 1943, and was killed in action at Orsara, Italy, 25 October 1944

1939-45 Star; Africa Star, 1 clasp, 8th Army; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, with named Army Council enclosure, in card box of issue, addressed to ‘Dr. C. St. A. Vivian, “The Glen”, Plantation Road, Leighton Buzzard, Beds’, extremely fine (5) £160-200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Second World War Casualties.

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Graham St. Aubyn Vivian was born in 1922, the son of Dr. Charles St. Aybyn Vivian and his wife Mary Elizabeth Vivian, and was educated at Epsom College, where he was a Prefect and a member of the 1st XV. He was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1940, and was subsequently attached to the 69th Field Company, King George V’s Own Bengal Sappers and Miners. He was present at the battle of Ortona, 5-13 December 1943. Here the enemy had been ordered to “fight for every last house and tree”. Terry Copp, in his book The Battle of Ortona, gives the following account: ‘The actual terrain over which the battle was fought is the most important primary source of information available to historians, in the grey winter, when rains turn rivers into racing torrents and the ground into thick clinging mud… the next day (9 December) was the hardest of the campaign as the enemy repeated counter attacks all across the front. The Indian troops attacking 1,000 yards to the East ran into the same demonic fury. They carved out a small bridgehead and fended off countless enemy as engineers from 69th Company Bengal Sappers built the “Impossible Bridge” (across the Moro River). When it proved impossible to assemble the Bailey bridge from the South side the sappers manhandled their equipment to the North bank and built the bridge backwards!’

The Battle of Ortana was the culmination of the fighting on the Adriatic front in the Italian campaign during ‘Bloody December’, and the battle was dubbed ‘Little Stalingrad’ for the deadliness of its close-quarters combat. Vivian was killed ten months later, on 25 October 1944 during two days heavy fighting for Orsara, and is buried in Faenza War Cemetery, Italy.