The Victoria Cross awarded to a World War One soldier killed alongside celebrated war poet Wilfred Owen in the same brave action has sold for £130,000. Second Lieutenant James Kirk, 21, from Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester, died under heavy machine gun fire as he protected soldiers building a footbridge over the Sambre-Oise Canal in France on 4th November 1918.
He continued fighting even after being shot in the face, having paddled across a canal on a makeshift raft to single-handedly confront German gunners. On the same day in the same brave action, war poet Lt Wilfred Owen, aged 25, was also killed. His best-known works were published posthumously, including Dulce et Decorum Est, Futility, Insensibility, Strange Meeting and Anthem for Doomed Youth. World War I ended seven days later when the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
Auction sale at Noonans
On Wednesday this week, Kirk's VC was sold by London auctioneers Noonans for £130,000. It had been expected to fetch between £100,000 and £160,000.
Noonans said Kirk made "the ultimate sacrifice" as he sought to defend the Royal Engineers who were trying to bridge the Oise Canal during the Battle of Sambre on 4 November 1918. Kirk took a Lewis machine gun and four magazines and paddled himself across the waterway on a raft made from petrol tins and cork floats "under a most intense machine gun barrage", Noonans said.
Last stand described
The auctioneers added: "The bank bristled with machine guns. He set up his Lewis gun at 10 yards range and fired off the whole of his ammunition. Further ammunition was paddled across to him on the raft and he continued firing, covering the Royal Engineers in their task. He was wounded in the arm and the face but still fired continuously from a most exposed position until he was shot through the head and fell dead over his gun."
In the same action on the same day at the canal, Wilfred Owen was also killed by a German machine-gunner while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre-Oise Canal. Owen enlisted in the army in 1915 and won the Military Cross for bravery three years later. He saw action in a number of battles and met the poet Siegfried Sassoon while recovering from shell shock in a military hospital in Edinburgh. Sassoon encouraged his writing and edited his only book of poems which was published in 1920.
Medals and aftermath
About 17 million soldiers and civilians were killed during WW1. Kirk's Victoria Cross, which was awarded posthumously, was sold alongside his three other war service medals. After the sale, Christopher Mellor-Hill, head of client liaison at Noonans, said: "I am very happy to see it find a home in a new collection of British Gallantry awards."
