Red Cross M.B.E award
Here's something you don't see on the forum that much... a civil award to a man who worked to help the other casualties of a world war, the civilians caught up in the aftermath.
Mr John Trevor worked for the British Red Cross Civilian War Relief, and in January 1946 he was made a Member of the British Empire in the King's birthday honours list for his work with the Hungarian wagon train. Click on all images to enlarge.
Details of what he actually did are rather sketchy, but the page from his passport shows that he renewed his document at the British consulate in Rome in June 1945. So the probability is that he was in Italy much earlier than that, and helping out with the refugees there before moving on to Austria. Letters he received congratulating him on his award place him at Kärnten (Carinthia), and the wooden box containing some of his belongings bears the crest of Kärnten. His passport photograph of him in his red cross uniform appears to show a WW1 ribbon bar with the last ribbon possibly being for the Meritorious Service Medal (M.S.M.)
During 1945 and the early part of 1946, Austria was full of displaced persons from the camps which housed forced labour, those from the concentration camps, and those who had fought alongside Germany. Mr Trevor seems to have been involved with the repatriation of Hungarian nationals, and although there were those who wished to return to their homeland, there were others who had every reason to fear a return. Hungarian troops who fought alongside their German allies during the invasion of Russia were noted by the Germans for being particularly brutal towards the civilian population, and were said by the Germans to be engaging in 'Murder tourism.'
At war's end, many Hungarians refused to return to their homeland for fear of Russian reprisals for what they had done, and such was their terror that quite a few committed suicide rather than be forcibly returned home. Britain did not have a policy of 'forced repatriation' for those Hungarians who refused to return, but the Government of the day was at the very least guilty of using coercion to get them to return. The official history of the British Red Cross tends to gloss over this period, and the only mention of the repatriations is of the wagon trains in a small footnote on one page....
'One noteworthy effort was the repatriation of thousands of Hungarians deported for forced labour by the Germans. They were assembled in parties of about a 100 carts - each vehicle being the nucleus of a family - and by nineteen staging posts made the journey home - 500 kilometers - in about ten days
(taken from: Red Cross and St John War History 1939-1947, page 497. Published by Sumfield and Day Ltd 1949)
Below are the congratulatory letters sent to Mr Trevor. I find it somewhat odd that there is no mention of him in the official history.
Cheers,
Steve
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