We originally posted this story in 2019. To mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we’ve updated it with information and images Lisa Soverall and Patricia Dark found.
Just after midnight on 6 June, 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history began. To the people taking part, it was Operation Neptune. We know it better as D-Day. It marked the first day of Operation Overlord, or the Battle of Normandy. Between 6 June and the German retreat across the River Seine on 30 August 1944, Allied troops began the long, hard process of liberating Western Europe. This second front in Europe also helped reduce the pressure on the Soviet forces fighting on the other end of the continent.
Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
— General Dwight D Eisenhower, Order of the Day, 6 June 1944
This year, D-Day is particularly special. It’s the first time the British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer is the site of a milestone commemoration. Then-Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the site overlooking Gold Beach on the 75th anniversary of D-Day in 2019. Two years later, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was unveiled. The memorial features a central court which bears the names of those under British command who were killed on D-Day. Around the court, 160 columns bear the names of those who died later: 22,442 people in all, from more than 30 countries. Their names run clockwise, in chronological order of their deaths.
One of those names is unique. The entry for Corporal Sidney Bates on Column 285 is the only one to feature a small gunmetal cross. It signals he was the only servicemember commemorated on the memorial to receive the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry.
In Southwark, we know Sidney better as Basher. This is his story.
Sidney Bates was born on 14 June 1921, in Crown Street, Camberwell. He was the son of Gladys and Frederick Bates. Frederick worked as a rag-and-bone man, collecting materials like cloth, paper, bones, and metal for reuse and recycling. The family eventually included Sidney and his brothers Frederick, Alfred, and Albert and his sisters Gladys and Patricia.
Sidney went to Comber Grove School, where he got the nickname “Basher” for his boxing skills. His family remember him as a quiet kid, unassuming but a merry prankster – and because of his quiet side, he usually got away with his pranks!
When he left school at 14, Sidney went to work as a carpenter’s labourer. In June 1940, he joined the army, entering the 1st Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment. They were stationed at Wimbledon, not too far from home for Sidney. He met another London boy there, Jonathan Charles Tomlin from Bethnal Green. Jonathan was only 17 – the same age as Sidney’s younger brother Bert. Because he was shorter than most of his comrades, and wore small round specs, Jonathan picked up the nickname “Tojo”, after the Japanese prime minister. Tojo was a bit of a surrogate brother to Sidney, and the two became great friends.
The 1st Royal Norfolks left their Wimbledon billet for the marshalling areas on the coast shortly before D-Day. Just before Sidney shipped out, the Bates family got together at the Sultan pub. He admitted his fear of what lay ahead to his mum before he left.
…keep your chin up and be brave for my sake. Well Mum give my love to Glad and Pat. Close for now.
Your loving son
Always, Sid XXXXXXXXX
–Close of Sidney Bates’s last letter home. From the collection of Chris Bates
They landed on the right flank of Sword Beach, near the city of Caen – codenamed Red Queen beach – at 7:25 AM on D-Day. They then fought their way through Normandy, the Low Countries, and Germany: a sphere of action known officially as the North West Europe campaign.
After breaking out of the D-Day beachheads, British units were fighting in the Norman bocage – a landscape of mixed pasture and woodland, where fields and narrow country lanes are sunken into the spaces between narrow ridges topped with high hedgerows which act as windbreaks for the livestock in the fields. It’s picturesque, and easy to defend – but incredibly hard to fight through.
General Montgomery commanded the 21st Army Group in which the 1st Royal Norfolks served served. He claimed the unit was second to none. Sidney showed similar excellence: in the weeks after D-Day, he received two promotions. On 13 July 1944 – the day before Bastille Day – he was made a lance-corporal, and two weeks later an acting corporal.
On 6 August 1944, the 1st Norfolks were relieving the 3rd Monmouthshire Regiment near the village of Sourdeval. These units were holding a strategically critical salient on the Perrier Ridge – they were attacked in force by the 10th SS Panzer Division. Sidney was commanding a section (a group of 10 soldiers) at the right side of the left-forward company after the death of his sergeant. He tried to move the section to avoid taking further casualties.
However, the Germans pushed deeper into the section’s position. Eventually, Sidney’s section came under attack by 50 to 60 Germans armed with machine guns and mortars and supported by panzers. Tojo Tomlin, Sidney’s close friend, was the section’s Bren gunner. He died in Sidney’s arms, hit in the face by machine-gun fire.
That’s when Sidney acted. He picked up Tojo’s Bren gun, got up, and advanced into the hail of bullets and mortars, firing from the hip. He was struck by machine gun fire and fell to the ground.
He got up, and continued advancing and firing.
He was hit, and got up again, twice more.
The fourth time, Sidney was hit by mortar shrapnel. This time, he couldn’t get up. Instead, he wrapped himself around his gun, firing at the enemy for as long as his strength held out.
But that was long enough. The Germans – perhaps shaken by Sidney’s determination – retreated to the sound of his gunfire, leaving the position in the hands of the British. For his comrades, and many historians, his single-handed charge was the turning point of the battle.
Stretcher-bearer Ernie Seaman brought Sidney from the field where he fell to a farmhouse nearby, which was being used as a forward field hospital. He was badly wounded in the legs, stomach, and throat, and died there two days later on 8 August.
On 2 November 1944, Sidney’s Victoria Cross citation was gazetted. Frederick and Gladys collected the award in the spring of 1945. They and Patricia, their only child left at home, had been bombed out of their home in Councillor Street. The family refused to leave Camberwell, despite having lost everything. A public appeal for the family even reached Sidney’s comrades, now fighting in the Netherlands. Their whip-round raised more than £100. All together, the appeal provided funds for Frederick to buy a new cart and pony, so he could keep working. He named the pony “Basher”.
Sidney has many memorials. The most obvious is his gravesite, plot XX 14E in Bayeux War Cemetery. His epitaph says that “[h]is parents proudly remember him as a true Camberwell Boy and a loving Son”. There’s also his entry on the British Normandy Memorial, a monument in the field where he fell, and a memorial bench on Camberwell Green. His nephew Chris is a stonemason, and laid many of these.
Others are less obvious. His charge also featured on the front page of volume 157 of the comic The Victor, first published in 1967. It was reprinted twice before the comic folded in 1992. But perhaps the most poignant memorial to Sidney is a cottage in Norfolk named for him. It’s one of six built by the regiment’s memorial trust to house their retired – and honour their fallen – comrades.
Today, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we remember Sidney Bates VC proudly, and – to use the words inscribed on the British Normandy Memorial – with everlasting gratitude. We hope you do too.
The Sultan pub is gone now, but maybe, wherever you are, lift a glass to Basher Bates: a true Camberwell boy, a loving son, and a good mate.
If you’d like to learn more about Operation Overlord, find out how to visit the British Normandy Memorial, or discover more stories like Basher’s, visit the British Normandy Memorial’s website.
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