Private Henry Tandey, British Army 1910-1926
Welcome everybody! To one of my new series where we talk about interesting facts about: History, Biology, Science etc etc...
So let's get starting with our first entry. About a Private of the British Army who had an encounter with Hitler in WW1 and had the chance to kill him but didn't.
Early Military Service.
His military career started when he enlisted in 1910. After he was done with his training he was sent to the 2nd Battalion on 1911, he served in Guernsey and South Africa before the start of WWI. He fought in multiple battles but one of the most impressive moment in his career was in 1918 during the capturing of Marcoing, France, where his platoon got pinned down by machine gun fire. Henry crawled down and found the position of the machine gun and eliminated it. In the evening his eight comrades got surrounded by a large number of enemies. Henry led a bayonet charge fighting fiercely and captured 37 enemies. Although he was wounded heavily until he won the battle... Such a badass.
Medals.
He had a total of 10 medals, that he won during his battles... I'm gonna name on of the few medals he had.
Victoria Cross, that he won on the 14th of December 1918.
Distinguished Conduct Medal, that he won on the 5th of December 1918.
Military Medal, that he won on the 13th of March 1919.
His encounter with Hitler.
On 28 September 1918, Henry was serving with the 5th Duke of Wellington's Regiment. During a furious battle with the Germans, Henry's sights came across a German solider who was wounded and wasn't even attempting to raise his rifle. Henry choose not to shot the wounded solider. The Solider nodded his head as an appreciation for sparing his life and ran away. That solider was Adolf Hitler.
Hitler carried this photo with him to remind him how close he came with death. When asked why he kept this photo of a solider carrying a wounded man in 1918 by Neville Chamberlain, Hitler replied with:
That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again; Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.
This is one of the biggest "what if" in human history. But my opinion is if Hitler would have died there someone else would start WW2 or maybe not. We may never know what would have happened.
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Credits:
Private Henry Tandey Wikipedia Page: Click Here!
A Video explaining how the encounter happened:Click Here!