Sergeant Alfred Knight
Sergeant Alfred Knight was the only member of the Post Office Rifles to be awarded a Victoria Cross, the highest British award for gallantry. The BPMA are lucky to hold the Victoria Cross of this hero of the First World War in the collection, along with his other medals.
Early Life
Alfred Joseph Knight was
born at Ladywood in Birmingham
on 24 August 1888. Educated
at St Phillips Grammar School, Edgbaston, he entered the Post Office as a
Clerical Assistant in the North Midland Engineering District in 1909.
When the Post Office Engineering Department moved to Nottingham in 1912, Knight transferred there. He was working in Nottingham when war broke out in 1914. In 1915 he married Mabel Saunderson (they are pictured together on the left) and later they had three children together.
Post Office Rifles
Knight joined the 2nd Battalion of the 8th City of London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) in 1914. The 2nd Battalion initially served as a reserve regiment, supplying reinforcements for the 1st Battalion but in January 1917 the battalion also moved to the front line in France.
The battalion first saw action in the Second Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917 and during this battle Knight distinguished himself in the field by bringing in wounded men under enemy fire and thus was promoted to Sergeant.
Knight was later awarded
the Victoria Cross for ‘most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty during
the operations against the enemy positions’ (London Gazette, 8 November 1917, reprinted in the Post Office Circular, 20
November 1917) at the Battle of Wurst Farm Ridge, Alberta Section, Ypres on 20 September 1917.
The report in the London Gazette goes on to describe how
‘Sergeant Knight did extraordinary good work, and
showed exceptional bravery and initiative when his platoon was attacking an
enemy strong point, and came under very heavy fire from an enemy machine gun.
He rushed through our own barrage, bayoneted the enemy gunner, and captured the
position single-handed…His several single-handed actions showed exceptional
bravery, and saved a great number of casualties in the Company. They were performed under heavy machine gun
and rifle fire, and without regard to personal risk, and were the direct cause
of the objectives being captured.’
Victoria Cross
Knight was decorated with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 3 January 1918. The announcement of his VC attracted a fair amount of attention when he returned to Nottingham in December 1917.
At a civic reception he was presented with a silver tea service and £100 war bond by the city. His fellow postal workers also bought him an inscribed clock and the local Press saw him as quite a celebrity!
Knight’s heroism was also celebrated in Birmingham where he was born and bred. Here he was awarded an illuminated address and another clock at a civic reception in January 1918. The picture on the right shows Knight with the mayor of Birmingham.
Knight
was always a modest man and his dismissal of accounts by the Press of
his VC
action led to him being nicknamed ‘The Jolly VC’. Years later Knight
spoke of his survival as a
miracle and said that a 'photograph-case and a cigarette-case probably saved my
life from one bullet, which must have passed just under my arm-pit – quite
close enough to be comfortable!’ (VCs of the First World War, P172).
Knight soldiered on with the Post Office Rifles until after
Armistice Day and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Sherwood
Foresters on 17 March 1919. Knight was also awarded the British War Medal
and Victory Medal for his part in the First World War.
After
the war
After the war, Knight
returned to his Post Office career but in 1920 he transferred to the Ministry
of Labour. When he retired in 1951, he
was Senior Wages Inspector in the Midlands Section of the Ministry of
Labour.
In the year of his retirement he
was awarded an MBE (civil) for his services to the British
Empire. He was also awarded
medals on the coronation of both George VI and Elizabeth II and the BPMA are
lucky to hold all of Knight’s medals in the collection. Knight is pictured on the left wearing his medals.
Knight died in Birmingham on 4 December 1960, aged 72 and is
buried in Oscott Catholic
Cemetery, Birmingham.
In his memory, on 17 March 1979 an oil painting by Terence Cuneo depicting the actions that won Knight his VC was unveiled at Inglis Barracks, Mill Hill (which at the time was the home of the British Forces Post Office).
On 9 November 2006 a road on a new estate in Birmingham was named ‘Alfred Knight Way’ after the city’s local hero. Pictured right.
