Charles Upham, VC & Bar, was the last man to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice. He is only one of three men ever to have achieved that feat and the only one of those men to have actually been a combat soldier. The other two, Captain Noe Chavasse, VC & Bar and Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Martin-Leake, VC & Bar, VD, FRCS, were both doctors in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1908, Upham left a career in farming to enlist at the outbreak of the Second World War (WW2).
Joining the 20th battalion of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, as a private, he was sent initially to Egypt before heading to the war in Greece.
Whilst in Egypt he was commissioned as an officer.
Following the Allied defeat in Greece, Upham was part of the 18,000 force sent to the island of Crete. On the 20th May 1941, German Fairborn troops landed on the island and a fierce two-week battled ensued.
It was during this battle that Charles Upham was recommended for his first Victoria Cross.
One of the minority of Allied troops to be evacuated from Crete, Upham was promoted to the rank of Captain and posted back to Egypt.
There the New Zealand Expeditionary Force formed part of the British 8th Army, facing Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in the deserts of western Egypt.
During the first battle of El Alamein, Captain Upham performed a series of gallant actions which earned him a second Victoria Cross (or more correctly a Bar to his original Victoria Cross).
Injured in the arm and legs, he was captured and taken to a POW camp in Italy.
There he embarked on a series of escape attempts which so infuriated the Germans that he was sent to the most secure, and infamous, POW camp at Colditz Castle in Germany.
Upon liberation in 1945, Upham was sent to England, where he was actually presented with his VC by King George VI and also met up with his New Zealand fiancé, Molly, who was serving as a nurse.
They were married in Hampshire.
On his return to New Zealand, Charles Upham was treated to a heros reception.
However, he shunned the publicity and for the rest of his life claimed that others had done as much as him, but they just hand’t received the recognition.
He returned to farming, about 90 miles north of Christchurch and finally retired in the early 1990’s.
Charles Upham VC & bar, died in 1994.
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