HOLY COW! HISTORY: WWI ‘coward’ turned out to be a hero

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. More than 110 years ago, that proved truer than anyone could have believed.

By 1915, World War I was in its second year. The Great War’s ghastliness was marked by trench warfare and disease, plus near-suicide-level attacks into machine gun emplacements protected by barbed wire entanglements. Not to mention the poison gas attacks. It was a living nightmare far beyond anything mankind had ever experienced before.

Consequently, the number of men stepping forward to serve in the British armed forces was declining sharply. The burst of patriotism that had initially filled British ranks had now drastically cooled off. September’s recruiting numbers were half of January’s; by December, it was even lower. (Britain was forced to begin drafting men in January 1916.)

Throughout 1915, patriotic women around the UK did their part to help the enlistment drive. By then, it was obvious that a certain segment of physically fit, military-age men was perfectly content to ride out the war safely at home.

So they attacked the shirkers where it hurt most: their manhood and masculine pride.

A campaign was launched sending women into public places. Whenever they saw a strapping male in his prime, out of uniform, they presented him with a single white feather.

It was a badge of shame. Chicken feathers are most commonly white. They were publicly calling the civilian man a coward to his face, where others could easily see.

So it was on Oct. 12. As a young Scotsman in a civilian suit walked down a street in the town of Carnoustie, a woman stepped up and placed a shameful white feather in his hand.

But she had made a terrible mistake that Tuesday morning. The man she meant to mortify with embarrassment wasn’t a coward. In fact, he was the exact opposite.

Six months earlier, that same man had once spent an agonizing day on floating barges raked by Turkish machine-gun fire. (The Ottoman Empire was fighting alongside Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary.) A makeshift bridge was needed to land the 2,000-man force onboard the SS River Clyde, a coal carrier pressed into service as a troop transport. She had been run aground intentionally to provide cover for the soldiers who would plunge out of the large doors that had been cut into her hull to attack a fortified castle above them. To reach it, the men first had to cross an impromptu bridge made up of lighters, flat-bottom cargo barges fastened together.

But that day, the lighters weren't cooperating. They refused to stay connected.

George Samson, a 26-year-old seaman in the Royal Naval Reserve, knew what had to be done. He and a handful of fellow sailors went directly into the merciless gunfire, securing the connections and rescuing the injured. Not just for a few minutes, but for several long, agonizing hours, until Samson himself was shot and injured.

While that initial attack at Gallipoli wasn’t completely successful — one of its primary objectives, securing the castle fortress, wasn’t immediately achieved; it would be taken after severe fighting the next day — the landing did establish an important beachhead. (The Gallipoli Campaign itself, however, would go to become one of World War I’s costliest disasters.)

Samson returned to his home in Scotland. As he recovered there that fall, word came that he was being awarded for his heroism — not just any award, either, but the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military award for valor, the equivalent of America’s Medal of Honor.

The citation noted Samson had “worked all day under very heavy fire” at enormous risk to his own safety. The honor was personally bestowed by King George V during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Oct. 5.  

Then, exactly one week later, he was shamed for his apparent “cowardice” in his own home. And get this — just a few hours later that same day, the village of Carnoustie held a public reception honoring its hometown hero. (It’s unknown whether the white-feather bestower attended.)

Samson died of pneumonia eight years later at age 34.

So we are reminded again: Appearances can be deceiving. Don’t jump to conclusions. And never, ever, judge a book by its cover.   

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