Verdon Leslie Freude Besley

Though not recorded on the nominal roll, Verdon Besley of Hill Farm, Winscombe, joined aged 16 before he signed up to the Army “I must have been 16 or 17. Father stopped in the New Inn at Cross on the way home and I waited outside as I wasn't old enough to go in. Cliff Banner came out of the pub. I was already in the Home Guard and Cliff approached me to join this secret army. I had to sign this secret form. Not even my parents knew. They though it was just Home Guard.”

In 1944, aged 18 he joined the Queen's Royal Regiment and went all the way to Berlin. They captured a farm house but were counter attacked and cut off. Verdon's Auxiliary Unit training kicked in and he threw a phosphorous grenade at them to get them out.

He fired his last bullet out the window at a man shouting in German. He found out later that man was Captain Robert Maxwell shouting at the Germans to surrender. Maxwell got the Military Cross for this rescue. It was the day after Verdon's 19th birthday. Verdon later appeared on the TV programme This Is Your Life dedicated to the now disgraced tycoon. 

He later worked as a railway signalman and was a founder of the local Royal British Legion. He married Phyllis Brinson in 1951, then Dorothy Cowley in 1978.