Orders, Decorations and Medals

The “Yangtze incident” group of three awarded to Stoker Mechanic S. J. Bannister, Royal Navy, who was seriously wounded by a shell splinter in the opening stages of the action and among those evacuated to Rose Island: he was subsequently moved to Wutsin, operated on without anaesthetic, and held hostage and interrogated by the Chinese, before being returned to the Amethyst in time for her triumphant escape under Commander Kerans

Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Yangtze 1949 (D/SKX. 833816 S. J. Bannister, Sto. Mech., R.N.); Korea 1950-53 (D/SKX. 833816 S. J. Bannister, S.M., R.N.); U.N. Korea, nearly extremely fine (3) £2500-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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Samuel J. Bannister, a fresh-complexioned 21 year old from Belfast, joined H.M.S. Amethyst at Hong Kong shortly before she commenced her journey to Nanking to relieve the destroyer Consort from her “guardship” duties. And when the Amethyst came under attack from communist Chinese forces on 20 April 1949, he was wounded below deck, a shell splinter lodging in his chest. Lawrence Earl’s Yangtze Incident takes up the story:

‘ ... A shell crashed through the low power-room bulkhead. This was on the starboard side of Amethyst. Bannister heard an explosion, and seemed to be completely enveloped in a great, blinding flash of light. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

Blood seemed to be spurting all over him. He thought at first that he had been hit in the face. He hadn’t. A shell-splinter had entered his chest, and was lodged tightly against the right branch of his windpipe. He looked up, and saw a rating standing in the doorway of the power-room, his face and one arm covered with blood. He couldn’t make out who it was.

Bannister was down on the deck, and he couldn’t remember falling. He tried to get to his feet and walk. He couldn’t manage it. He crawled painfully round to the protection of the port passage, pushing himself awkwardly along, crablike, with his legs. Then he noticed that others who were not wounded were crawling too. They did not want to be hit by flying splinters.

One of the stokers yelled at him, “You look bad, mate. Go back to the after mess-deck and lie down.”

Somehow, gasping and constantly fighting the pain, Bannister managed to crawl to the after mess-deck. Half a dozen other wounded men were already there. They were lying on the floor, as they had been instructed to do, to reduce the chances of being hit again. They could not use the sick bay, which had been left in a shambles by the shell which had killed Barnbrook. Stoker Mechanic Brown, a friend of Bannister’s, was helping some of them.

Bannister’s face was contorted with pain. “Brownie,” Bannister said, “Will you put a piece of cloth in my mouth, so I can bite on it, like, and kill the pain.”

“Sure, Paddy. What’s wrong?”

“I can’t breathe.”

Brown rolled up a piece of gauze for Bannister to bite on. He put a lifebelt under his head for a pillow. Alderton was administering morphia to the men by hypodermic needle to kill the pain.

He gave a shot to Bannister. For a long time it didn’t seem to have any effect. Bannister continued to bite hard on the wad of gauze. He made a faint, hissing noise as he breathed, and little beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead, gathered into large drops, and fell in rivers down his nose and along the sides of his face ... ’

As a result of his condition, Bannister was one of those evacuated to Rose Island later that day, being one of four men put in the ship’s whaler - which nearly capsized after a near shell miss. Finding himself alone in the water, and all but drowned, Bannister somehow mustered the energy to drag himself to the nearby beach, where helping hands dragged him into the cover of long grass and bamboo.

With some 60 evacuees now on Rose Island, Bannister found himself in the party of which Chief Petty Officer Heath took charge. This party, many of them in nothing but their underclothes, made their way cautiously on hands and knees to the cover of the south side of the island, Bannister crawling all the way in great pain. At the south bank the party were ferried across the river in sampans by Nationalist troops, who clothed them in Nationalist uniforms but without any shoes. Bannister, however, was unable to walk and was carried on a stretcher by four Chinese, the party arriving at a camp late in the evening after marching for most of the day. After resting, the party continued on its way to Shanghai where its members were drafted temporarily to London.

But for Bannister and boy rating Keith Martin, who the Chinese considered too ill to continue the journey, alternative arrangements were made: another long and weary stretcher journey lay ahead for them for a day and half a night, to be followed on 22 April by a tormenting ride over vile roads, before they arrived at last at Wutsin. Here, they were taken into the shelter of the Christian Mission Hospital. It was three days since they had been hit and, except for some morphia that Bannister had been administered at the very outset, they had received no trained medical attention.

At the hospital Bannister was X-rayed and told that he would be operated on immediately for the extraction of the shell splinter bearing against his windpipe - an operation that was carried out without any form of anaesthetic but he bore his ordeal with great fortitude. Two days later, however, the town was occupied by the Communists and Bannister and Martin were interrogated in an attempt to get them to state that it had been the Amethyst that had fired the first shot - this they resolutely refused to do, much to the frustration of a senior Communist Officer, Colonel Kang, who was at this stage in negotiations with Commander Kerans. Lawrence Earl’s Yangtze Incident takes up the story:

‘Colonel Kang looked steadily and silently at them for a long moment. Then he began to speak in loud and angry Chinese. He harangued them for ten full minutes without interruption, eyeing Bannister and Martin almost balefully and gesticulating angrily as he spoke.

“I will explain,” the Major said, “what my Colonel has said to you. He is very angry with you both. Your ship entered Chinese waters and killed two hundred and fifty of his soldiers. Therefore, since you are both members of the crew of H.M.S. Amethyst, you cannot be left unresponsible. When we get your captain he shall die.” The Major’s statement of casualties inflicted by Amethyst was, of course, distorted ... Bannister stood up. His naturally pink face was flushed to a deeper shade of colour.

“You opened fire on us first! It wasn’t our fault!”

The Major held his hand up sternly. “Quiet! Martin may speak.”

Martin said, “Well, it’s true. You did open fire on us first.”

The Major got stiffly to his feet. “Go back to your room. We have nothing more to say to you.”

They returned to their room, talking over the meeting with Colonel Kang in worried tones. They were unable to sleep. They tossed in the narrow bed.

“Do you think they’re going to shoot us?” Martin asked. The same thought had occurred to Bannister, but he felt that, since he was the elder, he should not unduly frighten the boy seaman.

“No,” he said. “They just lost their tempers.” He kept thinking over and over and over again of the menacing phrase: “You cannot be left unresponsible.”

When the first shaft of daylight squeezed through their small window they were both still awake.’

Aware by now that two of his men were missing, Kerans made repeated demands that they be returned to the ship. The Chinese, however, continued to hold the two men hostage and to begin with did not even admit knowledge of their whereabouts. Eventually the Communist General Yuan Chung-hsien decided that his hostages were of no more use to him, having got no “confession” from them, and on the 25th May the two young ratings were returned to Amethyst, carrying with them a letter for Kerans from General Yuan. It read:

“These two ratings have been given medical care and have been provided with necessary supplies by the China People’s Liberation Army. It is for the friendship between the people of China and the people of Great Britain that we have given them friendly treatment. Now it is also for the friendship of the people of China towards the people of Great Britain that we send them back to the ship.”

Thus Bannister and Martin rejoined their 70 comrades on the floating prison compound that Amethyst had become, and for the next two months shared the privations imposed upon them by the insufferable heat, mosquito plagues and shortage of supplies until, on 30 July 1949, the Amethyst made her epic escape, through the night, down river to the open sea and freedom.

Sold with copies of Lawrence Earl’s Yangtse Incident, C. E. Lucas Phillips’ Escape of the Amethyst, and the reprint of Coxswain L. Frank’s diary of the incident, in all of which Bannister is extensively mentioned.

Provenance: Ex Douglas-Morris Collection, 16 October 1996 (Lot 443).