Henry Tandey VC DCM MM*

b. 30/08/1891 Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. d. 20/12/1977 Coventry, Warwickshire.

Henry Tandey (1891-1977) was born on 30th August 1891 at 4 Swain’s Buildings, Kenilworth Street, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His surname was recorded as Tandy on his birth certificate and appears in both forms throughout the family. This may have originated due to a disagreement between Henry’s father and grandfather, who believed that James was marrying beneath him. As a result, Henry was baptised on 11th September 1892 as Henricus Joannes Tandy. He was known in the family as Napper. His father, James Tandey was from Warwick, and was a stonemason. It is believed that he was kicked in the head by a horse when he was young, and this affected his mind in later life, and made him aggressive especially under the influence of alcohol. He married Catherine Anne “Annie” Shaw on 5th January 1891 at Leamington Parish Church. She was recorded as 18. James went on to serve in the Oxfordshire Light Infantry but deserted in 1897. He was apprehended and the Army refused to take him back, and he was dishonourably discharged. However, he did serve during the Second Boer War with 103rd (Warwickshire) Company, 2nd Battalion Imperial Yeomanry. He saw action before being invalided home with dysentery in 1902.

In 1906, James rescued a boy from a canal, and the local press recorded he had saved lives on seven previous occasions. He was awarded a certificate by the Royal Humane Society. Sadly, the other side of his character saw him frequently in trouble with the law between 1889 and 1920. Henry had nine siblings in all.

Henry Tandey
VC DCM MM*

Henry spent part of his early years in an orphanage and was educated at St Peter’s School, New Street, Leamington. He was charged with bathing in the local canal nearthe Clapham Terrace road bridge on 8th July 1906 and was dismissed on payment of 3/6d. He worked as a stoker / engineer at the Regent Hotel, Leamington, owned by the Cridlan family, on the maternal side of John Cridlan Barrett’s family (later awarded the VC in 1918).

He joined the Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own Regiment (Green Howards) in Richmond, Yorkshire in August 1910 and was posted to the 2nd Battalion with the service number 9545. He was quite a short man at five feet six inches tall and was known throughout his adult life by the nickname ‘Napper’. He served with the Regiment in Guernsey and in South Africa and was with them on the Western Front from the early days of the First World War. In October 1914, he rescued a wounded colleague, carrying him back through the British lines to the First Aid Post at the Menin Road Crossroads near Ypres.

Henry took part in the first Battle of Ypres in October 1914 and was shot in the arm at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was again wounded during the Battle of Passchendale in November 1917 whilst serving with the 5th Battalion the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. The war on the Western Front swung increasingly in favour of the Allies in late Summer 1918 and in an almost unparallelled burst of heroics by a single soldier, Henry Tandey won the three highest awards for bravery in the space of six weeks. He was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal, then a Military Medal and bar and finally a Victoria Cross for ‘desperate bravery and great initiative’ in one of the final battles of the war.

He was firstly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his command of a bombing section at Vaulx-Vraucourt, west of the Canal du Nord, on 28th August 1918. He found that the advance was held up, so called on two other men and worked across the open in the rear of the enemy. They rushed a post and returned with twenty prisoners, having killed several of the enemy. This action ensured the capture of the Northern Trench.

He was then awarded the Military Medal for his actions at Havrincourt on 12th September 1918. He brought in a wounded man under heavy shellfire. He went out a second time, found three more wounded men, and got them all under cover. He then fetched a party and assisted in their recovery. Next day he volunteered to lead a bombing party over open ground in the attack on the Hindenburg Line.

He was awarded the VC for his actions during the capture of the village of Marcoing on 28th September 1918. When, during the advance on Marcoing, his platoon was held up by machine-gun fire, he at once crawled forward, located the machine gun, and, with a Lewis gun team, knocked it out. On arrival at the crossings he restored the plank bridge under a hail of bullets, thus enabling the first crossing to be made at this vital spot.

Later in the evening, during an attack, he, with eight comrades, was surrounded by an overwhelming number of Germans, and though the position was apparently hopeless, he led a bayonet charge through them, fighting so fiercely that 37 of the enemy were driven into the hands of the remainder of his company. Although twice wounded, he refused to leave till the fight was won. His wounds saw him evacuated to England on 4th October 1918. He would be discharged on 14th March 1919.

He was also mentioned in despatches five times and on one occasion was told by a senior officer that his bravery could not adequately be rewarded because he had already won all the gallantry medals available. He was presented with his Victoria Cross by King George V at an investiture in Buckingham Palace in the week before Christmas 1918. After the war, Henry Tandey was employed for a period by the Army on recruiting duties. In 1919 he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Royal Leamington Spa and was presented with an illuminated scroll and an engraved silver-gilt casket. On Armistice Day 1920 he took part in the service for the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey where he was one of a hundred holders of the VC who were selected to line the nave of the Abbey as the guard of honour.

Henry was posted with the 2nd Battalion to Ireland in February 1921 and reverted to private at his own request. He served with the 1st Battalion in Gibraltar from 1922-1923 and Turkey later in 1923. He then served in Egypt between 1923-25. He was promoted to sergeant and acted as a recruiter. He was discharged on 5th January 1926 with a character described as “Very Bad”. As a result he wanted to resign his VC but his request went unanswered.

Twenty years after the end of the Great War, a story began to circulate of how in the earlier conflict Henry had spared the life of a certain German infantryman who came into his gun sights one day. According to the story, the man whose life Henry had reportedly spared was a German regimental despatch runner by the name of Adolf Hitler. The tale has been recounted any number of times over the years in newspaper and magazine articles and has been further embroidered in the process. The military historian David Johnson has researched the incident in great depth for his book ‘One Soldier & Hitler 1918 and has concluded that no part of it could be proved to have taken place.

Henry gave up soldiering and returned to civilian life in 1926. He got married for the second time to Edith Warwick and the couple moved from Leamington Spa and settled at Cope Street in Coventry. Henry got a new job working for the Standard Motor Company as a commissionaire, a job he would hold for the for next thirty-eight years. During the Second World War Henry was a Coventry Air Raid Warden and on the night of the German bombing on 14th November 1940 he returned home to Cope Street in the early hours to find that his house had been destroyed. Fortunately, his wife Edith was staying with her sister in Leamington on that particular night. His wife died in 1958, and Henry remarried to Anni Caroline Therese Whateley nee Kietzmann on 1st January 1963 at Coventry Registry Office.

Henry attended the funeral of Arthur Hutt VC on 20th April 1954 at Canley Crematorium, Coventry. William Beesley VC and Arthur Proctor VC were also present. He also attended the dedication ceremony of a memorial to Arthur Hutt VC in Coventry’s War Memorial Park on 17th April 1955. He attended a number of VC reunions including the VC Garden Party of 1920, the Victory Day Celebration Dinner at the Dorchester Hotel, London on 8th June 1946, the VC Centenary Celebrations in Hyde Park on 26th June 1956 and the first six VC & GC Association Reunions held in 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966 and 1968. He was the guest of honour at the 60th Anniversary Parade of the Battle of the Somme at Leamington Spa on 1st July 1976. He had an operation for rectal cancer shortly afterwards, but sadly the cancer returned.

Henry Tandey died at home in Coventry on 20th December 1977 at the age of eighty-six after suffering from cancer. His final wish was that his ashes should be scattered at Marcoing British Cemetery, near to where he had won his Victoria Cross and where many of his wartime colleagues were buried but for a variety of reasons this was not possible. The casket containing his ashes was buried without ceremony in the British Cemetery at Masnières in October 1978. In September 2012 the Leamington Town Council erected a Blue Plaque to commemorate him on a building in Kenilworth Street close to where his birthplace had once stood. It was unveiled ninety-four years to the day since he had earned his Victoria Cross and become ‘a hero of the old berserk type’.

Henry is also commemorated with Henry Tandey Court in Leamington, a maple tree planted in Jephson Gardens, Leamington in April 1978, a VC commemorative stone unveiled at Leamington War Memorial on 23rd September 2018, a plaque on the War Memorial in Coventry, and a plaque at the Stanley Hollis VC statue in Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough.

His medal group includes the VC, DCM, MM, 1914-15 Star with “Mons” clasp, British War Medal 1914-20, Victory Medal 1914-19 with Mentioned in Despatches oakleaf, Defence Medal 1939-45, King George VI Coronation Medal 1937, Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal 1953 and Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal 1977. Henry claimed to have been mentioned in despatches five times – First Battle of Ypres 1914, Battle of Loos 1915, 1st July 1916 at Glatz Redoubt, 22nd July 1916 at Guillemont, and 17th October 1916 at Guedecourt – but no official records have been found. Henry donated his medals to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment Museum in Halifax but on special occasions and parades he was allowed to wear them. During the last period he had them, he died. It is assumed his widow, Anni, was not aware that he had presented his medals to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in 1960 and were legally its property. Indeed in his will, he left them to Anni and had also stated he wanted them to go to Leamington Museum as he belonged to two regiments, implying he couldnt choose between them. The medals were auctioned at Sotheby’s on 26th November 1980 and were purchased by Sir Ernest Harrison OBE, Chairman of Royal Electronics for £27,000. The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment chose not to challenge the sale. Harrison also purchased the Stanley Hollis VC medal group in 1982, and at the Tower of London on 11th November 1997, he presented both groups to the Green Howards. Henry’s medals are displayed at their Regimental Museum in Richmond, Yorkshire.

LOCATION OF MEDAL: GREEN HOWARDS MUSEUM, RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE.

BURIAL PLACE: CREMATED AT CANLEY CREMATORIUM, COVENTRY. ASHES INTERRED AT MASNIERES BRITISH CEMETERY, MARCOING, FRANCE