On the railings of the Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk (the barracks of the red-coated Guards regiments) is a black plaque, dedicated to Corporal Arthur Percy Sullivan VC, whose death was a direct consequence of his fame.
He was part of the Australian Contingent at the 1937 coronation of George VI, invited to attend, and parade, at the event even though he had left the forces in 1920. (There were 100 soldiers, 25 sailors and 25 airmen in the Contingent, half of whom were currently serving, the other half former servicemen like Sullivan.)
An employee of the National Bank of Australasia, he had joined up in 1918 and, although arriving in Europe too late to fight in WW1, he then signed up to be part of the North Russia Relief Force, part of the Allied intervention on the side of the ‘White Russians’ against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, arriving in Archangel in early 1919.
He won his Victoria Cross in the August of that year for rescuing four of his comrades while under heavy fire from the Bolshevik forces. They had fallen into a swamp while crossing a narrow plank bridge and, as his citation read, “Without hesitation, under intense fire, Corporal Sullivan jumped into the river and rescued all four, bringing them out singly. But for this gallant action his comrades would undoubtedly have been drowned.”
Known as ‘the shy VC’ (“for his unassuming character and reluctance to talk of his exploits”), in 1919 he returned to Australia, and the bank, and subsequently got married, had children and was involved in numerous veterans’ events.
The Australian Contingent had arrived in London a few weeks before the coronation and were billeted in Wellington Barracks. Sullivan was returning to there one evening when he was ‘besieged by autograph hunters’. Trying to get away, he slipped on the kerb, and fractured his skull as he hit the ground, dying shortly afterwards. (In the subsequent coronation procession a gap was left in the contingent’s ranks where Sullivan should have been.)
He had a funeral with full military honours in the Guards Chapel, following which he was cremated and his ashes returned to Australia.
The bronze plaque – as black as the railings, so easily missed – was made in 1939, but because of WW2, was not put in its place by the barrack gates until 1946.
