A LOCAL historian is researching the history of a Wellington man who received the George Cross for an act of gallantry he showed more than 5,000 miles away in India nearly 100 years ago.

Frederick Henry Troake is buried in Rockwell Green Cemetery having died in 1974 at the age of 78, but it was his actions in India 53 years earlier which gained him the prestigious award.

He was originally awarded the Medal of the Military Division of the British Empire Medal for Gallantry, known as the Empire Gallantry Medal, which at the time was not considered to be equal to the Victoria Cross, but in 1940 the EGM was replaced by the George Cross.

All living recipients of the EGM were obliged to exchange their medal for the George Cross and Frederick duly did so.

He was serving as a Private with the 2nd Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment when on September 24, 1921, at Nilambur in India he showed ‘conspicuous gallantry in advancing up to the fence around a house in which rebels had been located’.

He then ‘covered the rush of an officer and NCO who set fire to the roof, forcing the rebels out’.

He and a colleague, Private Chant, “subsequently showed courage in clearing the rebels out of the gardens and jungle around the house.”

Nilambur is in the Malappurum district of South India where in the 1920s there were several uprisings against the British.

Although not commonly remembered now the Moplah Rebellion involved 10,000 guerrillas and led to 2,300 executions of Indians. Ten members of the Battalion lost their lives.

On June 1, 1923, Frederick and three other members of the Dorsetshire Regiment – Frederick Chant, Tom Miller and Assistant Surgeon 3rd Class George Rodrigues – were awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal for their actions in the Moplah Rebellion. They received their medals from King George VI at Buckingham Palace on July 24, 1947.

Now local historian Mike Perry is delving into the background of this Wellington hero of old.

“I’ve started researching the life of Frederick – there can’t be many people from Wellington who’ve received the George Cross,” he said.

“Perhaps readers of the WWN might have some more information about Frederick.”

Frederick was born in Wellington in September 1896 and was the son of Hannah Maria (née Twose) and William Troake, a general labourer who lived at 217 Rockwell Green.

He had a brother and two sisters. His mother Hannah died when Frederick was just 12. The children attended the village school.

Frederick left school at 13 and worked as a wool spinner at Fox Bros before joining the Somerset Light Infantry in 1913.

He was posted to India where he remained during the First World War and was awarded the British War Medal and the Territorial Force War Medal. His brother-in-law William Grinter was killed in the war.

In 1919 he married Lucy May Cooksley, the daughter of Thomas Cooksley, a brickyard labourer and blacksmith from Lower Poole. Frederick was, at the time, a Private in the 1st/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment.

Lucy had worked as a mender at Fox Bros but in 1911 was a patient at a Sanatorium for Consumptives at Winsley, near Bradford-on-Avon.

Frederick joined the 2nd Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment in India and gained the India General Service Medal with clasp Malabar 1921-22. In the mid-1920s he returned to England and he and Lucy lived at 29 Lower Foxmoor Road. They had no children.

His father, William, died in 1928. Frederick became a stoker at the Gas Works in Champford Lane but retired due to ill health in the 1940s. In 1953 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.

Lucy died in 1960, aged 68, and Frederick, aged 78, died in 1974. He was cremated and his ashes interred in Rockwell Green Cemetery.

If anyone has any further information about Frederick Troake – email Mike Perry at [email protected]