Remembering a Veteran: Petty Officer George Samson, HMS River Clyde, VC & White Feather

 

Petty Officer George Samson,  HMS River Clyde, VC 

While helping soldiers ashore from his ship, HMS River Clyde, the 26-year-old seaman  George McKenzie Samson (1889-1923)  attended to a tide of wounded for an entire day, hauling them to safety despite being wounded himself in a constant hail of machine-gun fire. It was only when he was cut down by as many as 19 bullets that the Scot, who had led an extraordinary existence working as a cowboy in South America and a train driver in Turkey, was finally pulled from the battlefield and treated for 19 wounds.  H was not expected to survive. The ship’s surgeon, Dr P Burrowes Kelly, commented: “Whether he lived or died, I knew he won the VC.”

Evacuated by hospital ship, he spent three months in Port Said undergoing treatment before being shipped home. He was recuperating in Aboyne when news reached his family that he had been awarded the VC. He then received a civic reception, and on 5 October 1915 he went to Buckingham Palace to receive the VC from King George V. He was then promoted to chief petty officer and was a guest at the 110th anniversary celebrations marking Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

In October 1915,  while he was home on leave wearing his civilian garb, a woman approached  Samson in his native Carnoustie and handed him a white feather. He became one of thousands of men out of uniform who were humiliated on the streets of First World War Britain by being publicly given the symbol of cowardice.

HMS River Clyde Under Fire, V Beach, 25 April 1915

The symbolic slandering of a war hero was an extreme, though by no means unheard of, example of a practice which had first emerged as early as 1914 thanks to the efforts of Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, a retired naval officer based in Folkestone, Kent, who founded the Order of the White Feather. Supported by a number of prominent female writers and leaders of the Suffragette movement, the Order encouraged young women to hand out white feathers to young men spotted on the streets out of military uniform.

Petty Officer Samson was by no means the only serviceman to be wrongly singled out for a feather, which were also handed out by supporters of Christabel Pankhurst, the daughter of Suffragette leader, Emmeline.

Samson's Burial Site, Bermuda

When he returned to service, the now married Samson's wounds continued to trouble him—only a fraction of the metallic pieces his body had received at Gallipoli had been removed—and he eventually finished the war out of uniform for the government. Postwar, his love of the sea drew him back to merchant marine work. Sadly, in early 1923 he began to feel unwell, and if they encountered another ship it was likely he would be transported home. Shortly afterwards, he was put aboard the SS Strombus and taken to Bermuda. Tragically, it was too late. He succumbed to double pneumonia in St George’s Hospital on 23 February 1923, and was buried with full military honours in the Methodist Cemetery, St George’s, Bermuda.

Sources: The Independent, 11 May 2014; VictoriaCrossOnline.co.uk.