Hector Bertram Gray

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Flight Lieutenant Hector Bertram Gray of the Royal Air Force, and member of the British Army Aid Group, was posthumously awarded the George Cross for "most conspicuous gallantry" in resisting torture after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in 1941 [1].

He smuggled medicine into the POW camp to help the many seriously ill prisoners incarcerated there and was a conduit for news from the outside world. When the Japanese grew suspicioius he was tortured and interrogated for six months but refused to divulge the names of fellow officers, such as Captain Douglas Ford of the Royal Scots, and Colonel Newnham of the Middlesex Regiment. He was executed by firing squad, with fellow prisoners, on the 18th of December 1943 and buried in Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong. He was born on the 6th of June 1911 in Gillingham in Kent. Notice of his award was published in the London Gazette on the 19th of April 1946. [2]