Commander Gordon Campbell was at Dulwich College from 1898-1900, leaving at 16 to join the Royal Navy. He went to the Britannia Naval
received in addition to the Victoria Cross included two French medals: Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. The whole set of 11 medals were inherited by his son David on his death in 1953.
27 October 1917 he was defending a position against a much larger Turkish Cavalry attack. All but three of his soldiers were injured or killed. He ordered the walking wounded to move back and sent a message requesting stretchers before stepping into the open to continue the fight, where he was killed. His family gave his Victoria Cross, awarded for his courage and the splendid example he set his men, to Dulwich College. In the spring of 2017 the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Forum in Dorset asked to borrow the medal to put on display. The Governors agreed and the medal was on exhibition until October. The medal also formed the centre piece of the Middlesex Yeomanry Association’s
College and passed out 1902 as a Midshipman. He had the usual varied naval career and when war was declared in 1914 he was on the destroyer Bittern which was deployed to escort ships in the Channel. When Bittern’s engines were blown Campbell was asked by the Admiralty to undertake ‘special service’. This turned out to be fitting out an old collier, Loderer, with guns and disguising her as a typical tramp steamer. She then went into service as HMS Farnborough , one of the ‘Q’ ships designed to fight German U-boats. Campbell soon proved himself expert in hunting the enemy, allowing his ship to be hit but not too badly damaged. Then, when the U-Boat surfaced, he would order his men to abandon the ship in panic and alarm and with a skeleton crew reveal his guns and destroy the U-boat. The ruse was very successful throughout 1916 and in February 1917 he played the trick on U-83 although the initial torpedo had damaged Farnborough beyond repair. For this ‘supreme test of naval discipline’ he was awarded the Victoria Cross. The following year Commander Campbell again used the trick and was offered a bar to his Victoria Cross. He turned it down, suggesting that the award went to another member of the crew. At his death the awards he had
David, who had taken Holy Orders with the Fellowship of St John, put them on loan to Dulwich College. On Founder’s Day 2017 we dedicated a paving stone in Campbell’s memory, in front of the First World War Memorial Cross. In July 2017 the medals were collected by the Fellowship and put up for auction. On 23 November 2017 they were sold to Lorne Thyssen, whose mother was a Campbell. He is named after Lorne Campbell (1915-1921, who won the Victoria Cross in the Second World War.
Lafone Day service in St Martin within Ludgate on the afternoon of Saturday 28 October 2017 and at their Commemorative Dinner in Drapers’
The second Victoria Cross recipient we celebrated was Major Alexander Lafone. He was one of several Lafones at the College,
Hall that evening. The medal was returned to the College in time to be on display for the whole College Act of Remembrance on 10 November, when we dedicated a memorial paving stone to Lafone. The medal was also shown to 4R in the Junior School, who developed a whole assembly around Alexander Lafone’s story.
born in 1870 he arrived here in 1881. When he left in 1889 he trained as an engineer before going to Assam as a tea planter. He fought in the South African War, as did his cousin William Boutcher Lafone (1869-1875), who was killed in action on 6 January 1900, his name appears on the wall of the Old Library. In 1914 Major Alex Lafone was still with the Middlesex Yeomanry and he served in Egypt before advancing to Palestine. On the
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