Harold Newgass GC - WW2 Hero

On 4 March 1941, Lieutenant Harold Newgass, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), was awarded the George Cross for an extraordinary piece of courage on the night of 28 November 1940 in Liverpool. That night, the Luftwaffe bombed the city and dropped a pair of magnetic mines on the gasworks at Garston in the south-west of Liverpool.

Newgass was a Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) Officer and his act of almost suicidal bravery is just one of the many that inspired me to write a trilogy based on the often-little-known actions of various RMS teams during WW2. In the first, They Have No Graves as Yet, I have fictionalised the account of Newgass’s astonishing achievement. Only commissioned as a Temporary Sub Lieutenant in September 1940, that night in November, he was called to investigate a mystery object dropped by parachute and entangled in a gasometer. Parachute mines were the responsibility of the Navy and not the Royal Engineers. Newgass had no idea whether the mine was a dud, magnetic or acoustic, but he had no choice but to deal with it as it was designated Category ‘A’. Until the mine was rendered safe, it threatened not just the gas supply to the south and east of Liverpool, but 6,000 residents had had to be evacuated from their homes. Moreover, work at the nearby factories had been suspended and the local railway and dock sidings shut. In Category ‘A’ incidents the RMSO’s life was considered subordinate to the needs of the city. Quite simply, Newgass was expendable!

The mine had penetrated the roof of the gas holder and landed in seven feet of filthy water, full of oil and tar. Newgass had to borrow breathing apparatus from the local fire brigade and work in pitch blackness. There was no question of using an electric torch in a container of highly flammable gas! Each oxygen cylinder lasted just thirty minutes and Newgass’s first sortie was one of reconnaissance. By touch alone he realised that the mine was leaning nose down against a steel strut supporting the gasometer’s roof, but the fuze was on the wrong side for him to reach it. He would need to turn it. Working in such conditions was hard labour and he found himself using up his precious oxygen supply quicker than predicted. Over successive sorties and over two days, he first protected the nose of the mine with sandbags, tied the tail to the roof and managed to turn the mine in order to access the fuze. On his fourth sortie, he began the precarious task of removing the deadly fuze, again in the pitch black and filthy water. The fuze was a self-destruct mechanism on a clockwork timer that had not exploded after its 17-second run time. Newgass had no way of knowing how much time was left on the clock and he was acutely aware that the slightest vibration could restart the clock. Only on his sixth visit to the mine was he able to render it safe finally.

The people of Liverpool, had they known it, had much for which to be thankful to Newgass that night. He was just one of a breed of extraordinary men who quietly and calmly went about their deadly business knowing that the slightest mistake or meeting with a new kind of booby trap, would bring about instant vaporisation. My Death to Touch trilogy pays homage to these men.