John Archibald Beckett

John Archibald Beckett was born on 14 March 1906 in Lurgan, County Armagh, Ireland, the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Beckett, and he joined the Royal Air Force in 1935. His service took him through the evacuation from France in 1940, a posting to Canada, and tours in Egypt from 1944 and Palestine from 1946, where by 1947 he was serving as a sergeant and motor transport driver. On the night of 28 March 1947, at RAF Ein Shemer in Palestine, he was driving a refuelling vehicle servicing a Lancaster of No. 38 Squadron when a fire broke out in the vehicle’s pumping compartment, engulfing him in flames and setting the bomber’s fuselage alight. Despite being severely burned, Beckett climbed back into the driver’s seat and drove the blazing tanker some 400 yards clear of the aircraft park, removing the danger that its load of more than 2,000 gallons of fuel might explode among the parked aircraft and the men working around them. He died of his injuries on 12 April 1947, aged 41, and was awarded the George Cross posthumously for his selfless courage, the citation appearing in the London Gazette of December 1947. Sergeant Beckett is buried in Khayat Beach War Cemetery, in present-day Israel, where his headstone bears the inscription “His unselfish gallantry saved many comrades.”