The great bluff

Perhaps that's unfair. Maybe there's a distinction and he is simply not remembered.

All that, at any rate, may be about to change.

An extraordinary story of good stuff in little bundles, McKean - just 5ft 6ins tall and barely nine stones in weight - became one of just five men to win Victoria Cross, Military Cross and Military Medal. He was killed in 1926, while cutting wood.

McKean was born at 102 High Street, Willington, on July 4 1888, his father listed on the birth certificate as a furniture broker. Young George was himself described as "extremely delicate".

Orphaned when young, he lived with a sister in Bishop Auckland before emigrating in 1902 to join two brothers in Canada, where in 1912 he began training for the Presbyterian ministry. In January 1915 he finally enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, having three times been turned down.

"Perhaps," notes the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, "his small size had been an obstacle."

In 1917, as a corporal infantryman, he was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in several operations. In 1918, after he had been commissioned in the field, Lt McKean's party in Gavrelle, France, was held up by German grenades and intense machine gun fire.

The German block was surrounded by barbed wire and defended by another machine gun. Realising that it had to be destroyed if the operation were to be successful, McKean - "disregarding all dangers"

- threw himself head first over the block, landing literally on top of the enemy.

Lying on one German, he was attacked by another, wielding a bayonet. McKean shot both. After running out of Mills bombs, he sent for a fresh supply while single-handedly engaging the enemy.

Re-armed, he attacked a second block, killing two, capturing four and driving the remaining Germans into a dug-out which was captured and its guns destroyed.

"His splendid bravery and dash undoubtedly saved many lives," said the citation. "His leadership has at times been beyond praise."

Four months later, in the German-held French village of Cagnicourt, McKean and two other Canadian scouts were all that remained of an advance party. He himself had suffered shrapnel wounds; the rest of the troop was several minutes behind.

Realising that around 150 Germans were watching them, McKean began waving his arms - and his gun - barking orders as if in charge of a sizable contingent.

"I was dumbfounded, expecting the Huns to open on us for we were frightfully outnumbered," he recalled later.

"For a few seconds we stood staring at one another until we three Canadian scouts found ourselves in the middle of a mob of fleeing Germans."

Many thought he would win a bar to his VC. The Military Cross acknowledged the bluff guide to gallantry. Probably it was for ingenuity, too.

GEORGE McKean settled back in England, met and married Constance Hilton in Brighton - he'd first married, in Canada, in 1915 - had a daughter and ran a saw mill in Hertfordshire.

It was there, in November 1926, that he died.

Though it made the front page of the Edmonton Journal in Alberta, the Northern Echo afforded just four downpage paragraphs beneath the headline "VC's tragic end".

"Capt McKean was sawing some logs at his mills at Cuffley when the blade broke and his head came into contact with the revolving saw. Terrible injuries were inflicted and he died a few hours later."

His last request, his military funeral was in Brighton - "because it was where I met and won my wife" - attended by W H Stephenson and W J Thwaites from the Bishop Auckland branch of the British legion.

Captain McKean, the Echo added - and may thus have earned a medal for understatement - "had had an interesting career".

CAGNICOURT, in turn, had done little to commemorate George McKean until Michel Gravel, an impoverished roofing salesman and amateur historian in Ontario, fell to researching family connections with the great bluff.

His efforts persuaded the village of 400 people to act, about 40 - many teenagers - joining a committee. On September 6, 2003 the mayor unveiled a handsome memorial in the newly named Place de George Burdon McKean.

Pat Stanley, his daughter, joined other family members and Michel Gravel in the 2,000 crowd. It had been, said Gravel, sleuthing on a shoestring.

THE story may almost seem familiar.

Just three months ago we told of forgotten hero Tom Barton, also from Willington, who in January 1908 had been badly injured in an ultimately vain attempt to rescue a child from a house fire in the town.

Six weeks later, shortly after returning to the pit, the 19-year-old was killed in an underground accident.

With full honours, a 9ft white marble memorial was dedicated in St Stephen's churchyard on July 22 that year. For years it had stood neglected and overgrown.

Now, thanks to the efforts of Willington town council chairman Brian Myers and his colleagues, the refurbished memorial will be rededicated exactly 100 years later - at 6.30pm on Tuesday, July 22.

The Brancepeth and Aycliffe brass band will play at the service, local musicians Brother Crow will sing their song about "forgotten" Tom Barton. Willington, it is to be hoped, will turn out in force.

THE link between the two stories is Allan Newman from Darlington, who'd first called the column's attention to Tom Barton and now, in turn, salutes Captain McKean.

A VC student, he had been researching McKean when he came across Barton.

"It seems extraordinary that a small town can have had two truly amazing heroes born just a couple of years and a couple of streets apart,"

says Allan, himself a former DLI man.

He's helped by Marjorie Allen, herself born in Willington but now in Darlington, too.

The Imperial War Museum, which supplied McKean's portrait, has asked for a copy of his short biography. He hopes also to present one to Willington library on Friday July 4, the 120th anniversary of McKean's birth.

Councillor Myers hasn't been available.

It is unlikely, however, that George Burdon McKean VC will be forgotten much longer.

Cross purpose

THE days after George McKean's death offered a vivid glimpse of 1920s life, not least that John Thomas - headmaster of Hedley Hill school, near Tow Law - had been fined 40 shillings, with £7 17s 6d costs, for assaulting brothers Albert and Jack Deighton, aged 14 and 11. Thomas had actually caned them, illegally it was ruled, for using the school canteen after their pitman father had gone back to work during the stoppage.

The Reverend H Heyward, vicar of Brandon, had stepped in to defend the Charleston - "absolutely charming" - after a clerical colleague demanded it be outlawed as an offence against morality while down at Clack Lane Ends, Osmotherley, something almost as startling had appeared.

The structure, we said, was "new in connection with road transport in the North of England" but blended well with the countryside. Today it would be called a filling station.

Much the greatest uproar, however, was amid the usually cloistered calm of the nation's public libraries.

Gridlocked, the crossword craze had caught up with them.

In Liverpool, we reported, a 12 guinea dictionary had been defaced by the erasure of a "rare" word - "presumably intended to check the trail of rival competitors" - while in West Hartlepool the row spilled over onto page one.

Solver abuse had become a source of much inconvenience and damage, a clued-up librarian told the town council. Puzzled puzzlers were monopolising the dictionaries and other works of reference and occupying the whole of the students' table.

"Their conversation is a source of annoyance to serious readers and when checked or controlled they show great resentment," he added.

Never a cross word, the council banned them forthwith.

Chipping in to save the world

AFTER last week's venture into Hamsterley Forest with David Bellamy - read and bright and green all over - Brian Clouston in Durham has his own wood-for-thetrees proposal for the County Council.

Brian, who holds the OBE and is a past president of the Landscape Institute, wants the council to turn its thousands of acres of woodland - particularly alongside roads and walkways - into managed copses.

A copse, or coppice, is woodland which is periodically cut. His proposal, to be put to the council's energy forum next Tuesday, predicts that a wood chip industry could produce between 150,000- 200,000 tons of eco-friendly fuel each year, with a market value of between £7.5m and £10.5m.

It could fuel all the council's buildings and another 20,000 homes in the county and also provide employment, especially for those with few recognised skills.

An acre of copse, he says, could produce 60 tons of wood fuel every 12 years.

A ton of dried wood chips is worth about £50 and would provide the same amount of heat as 400 litres of oil, presently costing around £265.

Brian's been working on his scheme for the best part of a year. "The council seems very enthusiastic in principle," he says. "We haven't fully discussed the commercial aspects yet.

"It seems to me that huge resources are already there. It's just a matter of tapping them. It could be up and running within a year."

Good copse, bad copse? "I honestly can't think of a single downside," he says.

SAVE for the principal guest's 20 minute speech - quoting Mark 2:4: "They could not come nigh unto him for the press" - the launch party for the Friends of St Cuthbert's church in Darlington was a splendid evening.

The town centre church dates from the 12th Century, embraces a veritable cornucopia of treasures and yet is almost unnoticed by many of the population.

The opening also offered the chance to recall a 2004 sermon by Robert Williamson, the vicar, in which he spoke of his curacy in Kirby, one of Liverpool's more scallywag areas. Having an elderly green Mini, he'd said, meant there was less chance of coming out of church and finding it propped up on four bricks.

Now that Liverpool's the European City of Culture, so the joke goes, the wheel stealers prop up cars on four books.

The Friends, friendly indeed, are a wonderfully worthwhile body dedicated to preserving and promoting the true jewel in the town. Annual membership is £15, juniors £5, families £25. The church is usually open between 12-3pm from Tuesday to Saturday, and cheques may be sent to the treasurer at 11 Pentland Grove, Darlington DL3 8BA.

DOUBTLESS St Cuthbert's does a great wedding, too. Anticipating this weekend's Rooney nuptials, last Sunday's Observer - no less - reckoned that it would make the Beckham knot-tying "look like a rainy afternoon at Darlington register office". Other happy couples may know better.

STILL with church matters, our friends at the wonderful Newbiggin Methodist chapel near Middleton-inTeesdale - the world's oldest in continuous use - stage a free exhibition of "Youthful talents and skills", sub-titled "A celebration of creativity", this weekend. The chapel is open from 11am-4 30pm, Friday to Monday.

IN March we recorded the fabulous (no other word) Vintage Sixties Live night at the Victory Club in Tudhoe, outside Spennymoor. So that they can draw breath for a while, co-organiser Alan Leightell advises that tonight's monthly session - all welcome - will be the last until Thursday October 9. Very strongly recommended.

and finally, thanks to all those who have written about recent columns ranging from Dame Anna Neagle to Dr David Bellamy, from George Allison - the former Northern Echo reporter who became manager of Arsenal FC - to Meccano sets.

Only Keith Moorcroft in Wolsingham demurs a little. "I haven't dabbled in Meccano for many decades but could happily start again tomorrow - and build another Hornby train layout, as well. It could prove a very expensive article."

Cheap at the price, the column returns in two weeks.