On 3 November 1942, Lieutenant John Stuart Mould RANVR was gazetted for the George Cross for his great courage in mine recovery and disposal. He already held the George Medal and the King’s Commendation for similar courage. He was the first to defuze safely the German’s new acoustic and moored magnetic mines. Over the course of the war, he became an expert in defuzing mines underwater and he went on to help develop a new type of diving suit whose bubbles would not trigger acoustic mine. I pay homage to the bravery and skill of such men of the Royal Navy’s Rendering Mines Safe Section in my historically-accurate novel, They Have No Graves as Yet, and recreate some of Mould's exploits in my tale.
Mould was actually born in Gosforth, Northumberland, but when he was aged just two, his parents emigrated to Australia. There he became an architect before the outbreak of WW2. Then, in 1940, he was sent to the UK for training with the Royal Navy before volunteering for mine disposal work. Miraculously, he survived the war and returned to Australia in 1948. There he practised architecture once again and retired as the Chief Architect to the Housing Association of New South Wales.
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