‘Of course, I did not know this would be my last assignment...

‘Of course, I did not know this would be my last assignment in mines disposal work when I left the Admiralty before breakfast that morning and was carried by car to Hoxton. At the back of the minds of us who did this work was an acceptance that there probably would be a ‘last.’ In defence of our sanity, perhaps, to stop us leaping from the cars that carried us to each assignment, or maybe just in case we began to think ourselves heroes, we did not dwell on this probability. It was there. But suppressed. If and when the ‘last’ mine came … well it came. Several of our section had found it; some, less fortunate than I, did not live to tell the story. My ‘last’ buried me in rubble for several hours with my back broken and other injuries, and it kept me in plaster for the best part of a year.’
Lieutenant Jack Easton, G.C., R.N.V.R., as quoted in Wavy Navy: By Some Who Served.

The outstanding ‘London Blitz’ G.C. group of seven awarded to Sub. Lieutenant J. M. C. Easton, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, a member of the Admiralty’s secretive Land Incident Section who was buried alive by the detonation of a parachute mine in London’s East End in October 1940. 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
Easton was no stranger to the nerve-wracking business of mine disposal, having earlier made safe 16 such devices, including one which had crashed through the roof of the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury and ended up 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’

George Cross (Sub-Lieut. Jack Maynard Cholmondeley Easton, R.N.V.R. 23rd January, 1941.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, 1 clasp, France and Germany; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Coronation 1953, unnamed as issued; Jubilee 1977, unnamed as issued, mounted as worn, very fine (7) £80,000-£120,000

Footnote
G.C. London Gazette 23 January 1941:
‘For great gallantry and undaunted devotion to duty.’
Jack Maynard Cholmondeley Easton was born at Maidenhead, Berkshire on 28 May 1906 and was educated at Brighton College and Pangbourne Nautical College, prior to training as a solicitor and joining his grandfather’s law firm in the City of London.

Understated designation: The Admiralty’s ‘Land Incident Section’
A keen sailor, Easton was a perfect candidate for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and attended the training establishment H.M.S. King Alfred at Hove, Sussex prior to being appointed a probationary Temporary Sub. Lieutenant in September 1940.
As related in Wavy Navy: By Some Who Served, it was at King Alfred that he was one of twelve officers who 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.’
Here, they discovered their pending fate, namely immediate membership of 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.’
Easton continues:
‘There were many speculations as to why the mines had not exploded, even on contact. But that their mechanisms would start operating again to even the slightest movement or tap (as you might start a stopped watch by the gentlest finger-nail tap on its face glass) was something known. Our warning that the mine was alive again was the ticking of its mechanism, and when we heard that we knew we had a maximum of twelve seconds to get to safety. 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:
‘I confess to feeling very much alone in the world at that moment: the farmhouse was, of course, evacuated, and my police inspector, and his assistants had gone. We worked entirely alone on our tasks, for although each officer had the assistance of a trained rating, it was the ‘etiquette’ of the job to keep the rating out of the danger area until the real fang of the mine, the bomb fuse, had been drawn. 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 … ’
After careful digging to reach the fuse, he emerged triumphant, as he did from his next fifteen assignments.

12 seconds to live
As cited above, however, disaster struck on 17 October 1940. Easton takes up the story:

‘It was, as I have said, in Hoxton in the East End of London. One morning before breakfast a car took me to the district. As usual, I was greeted by the A.R.P. authorities, and, with my rating [Ordinary Seaman Bennett Southwell] by my side, I listened to what information they had. A large area of tenement property had been evacuated and ‘Unexploded Bomb’ notices erected round it.

The tenant of the house, a bit excited and self-important, described what he believed to be the position and size of the mine. Then, supplied with all available information, the rating and I set off down the drab street. Those solitary walks towards the location of a mine always reminded me of the last scenes in the pictures of Charlie Chaplin. I had the feeling that a vast audience was watching the way I walked. It had been a last scene for several men I knew, though such morbid thoughts were absent that day. I was looking for the house described.

It was easily discovered for the mine had crashed through the roof and made a great ragged-edged hole, and the slates littered the street and pavement. It was the usual type of working class home in the East End of London, one of a continuous structure of two-storied, drab erections, more miserable than usual because of the stillness, the emptiness of the houses. Through the windows one saw the miserable interiors, the little proud possessions in ornaments, plants, enlarged and coloured photographs of soldier and sailor sons, the parlour luxuries of poor folk. There was a rigidity and pathos in the long rows of small homes. The shattered roof was an outrage, somehow.

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 I 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, a Type ‘C’, 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. My first task should have been to make an easy escape route, but this would have meant disturbing the mine where it hung, and that was inviting trouble. I decided to dismantle the mine as it hung. 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.

The fuse was clear of obstructions, but when I attempted to fit the misnamed safety horns I discovered that the fuse had been damaged, probably as the bomb crashed through the house. The horns would not go into their place. I handed the attachment back to the rating as useless and took the tools for unscrewing the keep ring. The damage to this had jammed it, and, although I exerted as much effort as I could, 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.

On such work one had to plan ahead. When I discovered that the door could not be opened without disturbing the mine I had decided on a sequence of movements if the mechanism did become active. Now, to the stimulant of the whirring sound, I grasped and pulled open the door against the weight of the planks, for now it no longer mattered if the mine were disturbed, and I ran. I was through the hall in two leaps. As I emerged...