A wound of 67 years duration healed in 12 weeks

A Belfast-born soldier who trained alongside SAS founder Blair Mayne and was awarded a Military Cross for his gallantry in the Second World War. Captain Gerald Jackson Bryan was decorated with the Military Cross for the bravery he displayed as a commando at the Battle of the Litani River in June 1941 - he later proved himself an outstanding administrator in the Colonial Service.  

On the bright moonlit night of June 9, Bryan led a squadron of Scottish commandos in an attack on a large unit of the Vichy French forces who were guarding the Litani River in Lebanon - it was a major obstacle in the path of the Australian troops advancing from Palestine to Syria.

The operation had been postponed by two days after Glengyle vessel - carrying 11 Commando - was unable to get ashore due to large waves at the mouth of the river.

By the time Bryan led his men to battle in the early hours of June 9, the French had been alerted and demolished one of the two bridges across the river.

Armed with only a rifle, a pistol, a fighting knife and grenades, Bryan and his men quickly came under rapid fire from a 75-mm gun which reduced the unit by two thirds down to just seven. The captain silenced the gun and drove its crew into a slit trench by throwing a grenade, before capturing the gun and turning it around to knock out the remaining guns in the battery and blow up the ammunition dump. But he and the handful of survivors, who were severely wounded, were taken as prisoners to a casualty clearing station at Sidon. He later had his right leg amputated.

He completed officer training at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich and was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers. As a volunteer with the No 9 Commando unit he took part in a night exercise at a training centre near Fort William where he was taught how to shoot in close-quarter fighting. On one particular night, he mistook a dark figure approaching after he felled a tree with gelignite to block a road for the "enemy" and wrestled him to the ground. "Do you know who I am?" the stranger asked.

"No," said Bryan.

"I'm Lord Lovat," came the reply.

Bryan, feeling that he only had one card to play retorted: "Do you know who I am?"

When Lord Lovat answered no Bryan exclaimed, "Thank God!" and fled into the darkness.

He was 20 years old at the time.

During fighting Vichy French, Bryan felt a jackhammer pain in his legs. He dragged himself into a hollow and surveyed the damage. “There was a gaping wound in my right leg just above the foot,” he remembered. He fumbled in his pocket for a morphine pill, swallowed it, and tried to stop the bleeding. The section stayed pinned down for the next two hours, after which enemy fire suddenly increased and 25 Vichy soldiers advanced out of the scrub, bristling with bayonets. They captured Bryan and his men.

The Vichy French saved his life but not his right leg. His left leg had taken the bullet first, it had then blown a too large a hole in his right leg which had to be amputated. He had nothing but praise for the way he was treated by the Vichy French.

Sylvie was able to save his left leg, healed in 12 weeks, when Gerald had thought that after 67 years he would have to lose his left leg as well as having lived for 67 years with the right amputated.