PREVIEW: ORDERS DECORATIONS, MEDALS MILITARIA: 10 APRIL

It is difficult to single out the greatest heroes of the London Blitz – from the fire crews that tackled blazes as buildings collapsed around them to the ambulance drivers who rushed to rescue victims as the bombs continued to fall.

Prominent among them, however, must be the specialists who defused bombs and mines in extreme peril. One such was Lieutenant Jack Easton, G.C., R.N.V.R. who survived but paid a heavy price. Now his outstanding ‘London Blitz’ George Cross group of seven comes to auction at Noonans with an estimate of £80,000-120,000.

By the time Easton made his way to the East End of London to deal with a parachute mine in October 1940, he had already safely disposed of 16 other similar devices, but this time his luck deserted him. It exploded and he was buried alive. When eventually pulled from the debris, he was found to have suffered a fractured skull, a broken back and broken legs: his gallant assistant – Ordinary Seaman Bennett Southwell – was less fortunate, his decapitated body being discovered six weeks later.

The explosion came a matter of weeks after Easton, a keen sailor, had been appointed a probationary Temporary Sub. Lieutenant and then volunteered for a secret mission.
“I was, with others, to learn that, as far as the Navy was concerned, volunteering for anything is foolish vanity. Within eight hours of volunteering for this intriguingly phrased ‘secret mission’ I, with eleven brother officers, was reporting to H.M.S. Vernon, the gunnery and mines school at Portsmouth.”

There they found themselves signed up to the Admiralty’s Land Incident Section and a crash course in mine disposal.

“So many unexploded mines were sticking in the ground or hanging by their parachutes that the small, trained band of R.N. specialists engaged in rendering mines safe where they could be approached was unable to cope with the work. Somewhat grudgingly, perhaps out of consideration for our complete rawness or from an expert’s distrust of the amateur, the R.N.V.R. was being called in to share the Navy’s task.”

No one knew why the mines had not exploded, even on contact, but it was clear that the slightest movement or tap could one live again, leaving the man defusing it just seconds to get out of the way.

“In certain situations, this time margin meant nothing … as it meant nothing to a Sub. Lieutenant who died while dismantling his first mine: no part of him was found, not even a uniform button or badge. He just disintegrated.”

Easton’s first mine was located at a farm in Norfolk, buried to half its length in a chicken run. Left to tackle it by himself – it was etiquette to keep the assigned assistant out of the danger area until the bomb fuse had been drawn – Easton set about his task.

“So, I was in that farmyard quite alone. I don’t think I have ever been so much alone in my life. Our instructor had not mentioned this, as he had not mentioned the queer chill at the base of the spine. I gave one last look at the empty world I inhabited, then got on my knees beside them mine and began scraping away the earth…”

A further 15 successful missions included one in which Easton saved the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury by defusing a mine hanging from the chandelier in the main dining room: the grateful hotel owner presented Easton with a cheque for £140 – and an offer of Sunday lunch for his family for life – but both had to be rejected ‘as a matter of honour’.

Then came the fateful day: 17 October 1940.

Driven out to Hoxton, he found a large area of tenement property had been evacuated and ‘Unexploded Bomb’ notices erected round it.

Setting off with his assistant to find the exact location of the device, he saw a great ragged-edged hole in the roof of a typical working-class home, with the slates littering the street.

“The front door was open, and I entered a narrow hall. The thick dust here was familiar and eloquent to me now, and I moved cautiously, in case a too heavy footfall set the mine mechanism going again. The door on my right was the parlour and stood directly under the hole in the roof.”

The door was closed, so Easton turned the handle and pushed gently.

“It yielded only a few inches and then was held. I did not use force but sought another entry. Houses of this type had no back doors, so I returned to the street and walked a few houses along. I entered another open door, passed through the house and out by a rear window. Then I climbed over yard walls until I reached the house I sought and entered its parlour by the simple means of breaking a window and climbing through.”

The mine hung suspended through a hole in the ceiling, its nose within six inches of the floor.

“Standing close to it, I looked up and saw that the parachute was wrapped partly round a chimney pot and again caught on an ancient iron bedstead in the room above. The reason why the door had not opened was that several planks which had been part of the bedroom floor had been pushed down by the mine. Now they rested with their one end against the door and their other end under the round nose of the mine, so forming a prop.”

Easton’s first task should have been to make an easy escape route, but that would have meant disturbing the mine where it hung. Instead, he decided to press ahead with defusing it.

“I called my rating into the hallway and explained the position. He would remain in the passage and pass me, through the partly opened doorway, whatever tools I required.”

He soon found that the fuse was damaged, however, and he tried to unscrew the keep ring instead, but it would not turn.

“I had been working to detach this ring for perhaps a minute when the bomb slipped in front of me. There was a sound of falling brickwork as the chimney pot overhead collapsed, and I heard the whirr of the bomb mechanism. Unless I got clear, I had exactly twelve seconds to live.”

Yanking the door that had previously been blocked open – it no longer mattered if the mine were disturbed – he ran.

“I was through the hall in two leaps. As I emerged from the doorway, I saw my rating running down the street to what he, poor devil, thought was safety. I had no time to use distance for safety and ran across the roadway to a surface air raid shelter opposite where I was. It was a red brick and concrete-roofed structure. I reached it and flung myself on its far side, its bulk between me and the house I had just left. I flung myself tight against it, face down to the ground.”

He heard no explosion because the force of the blast rendered him unconscious immediately.

“I do not know what time passed before I became conscious. When I did, I knew I was buried deep beneath bricks and mortar and was being suffocated. My head was between my legs, and I guessed my back was broken, but could not move an inch. I was held, imbedded.”

Eventually dug out, he never knew how long he had been buried because for much of the time he had been unconscious.

“My rating was killed. He was beheaded by the blast. The mine destroyed six streets of working-class homes, and it was six weeks before his body was found among the rubble. He was a brave man and left behind a brave widow. I saw her receive her husband’s decoration from His Majesty the King.”

Easton spent a year in plaster but made a full recovery, although on being discharged from hospital he had lost all of his hair. As it happened, the head of L’Oreal, the beauty products company, was a client of the family law firm and he supplied a concoction that, administered daily, led to the gradual return of his hair.

Better still was the news of his George Cross. The Admiralty sent round three cases of champagne to his hospital and told him to listen to the 6 p.m. news, in which the award was announced; he was invested by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on 23 September 1941.

Easton subsequently served as First Lieutenant of the motor minesweepers MMS 6 (June -August 1942) and MMS 66 (August 1942-February 1943), prior to taking command of the MMS 22 in the latter month. He led a minesweeping flotilla off Normandy in June 1944, when a new type of German oyster mine detonated under his ship and wounded him for a second time.

Easton returned to his family’s law firm in the City of London after the war and was a committee member of – and legal adviser to – the V.C. and G.C. Association, 1957-94.

He died at Marchwood, Chichester, Sussex in December of the latter year, aged 88, his obituary notice in The Daily Telegraph describing him as ‘a witty extrovert’ who was ‘highly attractive to women’.