ABSTRACT
G.R.—or G. to those who knew him well-and it is certain that John Marshall and Freda Newcombe came to know him very well indeed-was a big, strong man. It is easy, if perhaps a little sad, to imagine him, in 1944 during the first days of the allied landings in Normandy, as a very young man in the uniform and attitude of combat. At over six-feet tall, and as strong as an ox, he must have cut an impressive and somewhat daunting figure. He was an experienced and battle-hardened soldier of demonstrable bravery, who had already spent two years in active service, and yet he was younger than most of the students I now teach. Indeed, he lied about his age to enter the army. In 1942 it must have been easy to convince eager army authorities that one wanted to enlist, as Britain was darkly at war, and G.R.’s physical stature would have been powerfully convincing. Although G.R. told me a story of joining the army to escape being persuaded into a looming marriage, I prefer to think of him as an idealistic young man wishing to liberate Europe of fascism. Either way, his terrible injury cut him down in his prime: Not yet 20 years’ old, he suffered a massive assault to his brain when a bullet was shot through his head. The injury was, in fact, a dreadful accident. He fell from the back of a lorry and a bullet, discharged from his own sten gun, penetrated his head at the front of the left ear, travelled upwards through his left cerebral hemisphere and made a large exit wound at the top left-hand side of his head (in the superior parietal region). G.R. offers a different story of the incident: He claims to have been hit by a German sniper bullet, but the upward trajectory of the bullet through his brain makes this most unlikely. It is quite reasonable that a Royal Marine might not wish it to be known that his war injury was an accident, but I believe we should see G.R. as a hero nevertheless.
