Michael Madden’s voice wavers when he recounts Kevin ‘Dasher’ Wheatley VC’s final act of supreme sacrifice and courage.
“It’s really hard to speak about what happened to him,” the Berwick author says.
“The devastation that it wrought on the family, it’s devastating what happened to them.”
Mr Madden’s ground-breaking book Dasher: The Kevin Wheatley VC Story tells the heroic act in detail.
According to Wheatley’s Victoria Cross citation, on 13 November 1965 Warrant Officer ‘Butch’ Swanton was wounded in the chest by gunfire from Viet Cong soldiers.
As his platoon came under heavy fire and scattered, Wheatley refused to abandon the dying Swanton.
“He discarded his radio to enable him to half drag, half carry Warrant Officer Swanton, under heavy machine gun and automatic rifle fire, out of the open rice paddies into the comparative safety of a wooded area, some 200 metres away,” the citation stated.
Wheatley was again urged to leave his comrade. Instead he pulled pins from two grenades as he “calmly awaited the Viet Cong”.
Both he and Swanton’s bodies were found the next morning, dead from gunshot wounds.
“Warrant Officer Wheatley displayed magnificent courage in the face of an overwhelming Viet Cong force which was later estimated at more than a company,” the citation stated.
“He had the clear choice of abandoning a wounded comrade and saving himself by escaping through the dense timber or of staying with Warrant Officer Swanton and thereby facing certain death.
“He deliberately chose the latter course.
“His acts of heroism, determination and unflinching loyalty in the face of the enemy will always stand as examples of the true meaning of valour.”
