Daphne Pearson

Pearson died on 25 July 2000, aged 89, in Melbourne, Australia. She was interred in "The Garden of No Distant Place" located in the grounds of Springvale Cemetery, in south-east Melbourne.

Pearson's attendance of a meeting of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association led to a report about her in a Sunday newspaper in 1995, and eventually to her meeting the pilot whose life she had saved, after his son recognised the circumstances surrounding his rescue.

Pearson visited Australia in November 1969, on the first flight of the Comet IV on the Heathrow to Darwin route. She decided to emigrate there, working in the Victoria region as a horticulturist, first at the Department of Agriculture and later at the Commonwealth Department of Civil Aviation. She attended reunions of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association until her late eighties.

After demobilisation in 1946, Pearson became the assistant governor of a women's Borstal. She later worked at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and owned a shop in Kew, selling gardening equipment, produce and flowers.

After the revocation of the EGM, King George VI invested Pearson on 31 January 1941 with its replacement, the George Cross. Four women became GC recipients overnight as they held the EGM. However, Pearson may have been the first woman to be invested with the new award. A portrait of Pearson at the time of the incident was commissioned and painted by the artist Laura Knight. Several weeks after the incident, Pearson was commissioned as an officer in the WAAF and served in RAF Bomber Command until the end of the war, working mainly as a recruiter.

In the early hours of the morning on 31 May 1940, Avro Anson bomber R3389 of No. 500 Squadron RAF undershot on approach to an airstrip near the WAAF quarters in Detling, Kent, crashing into a field. Upon landing, a bomb exploded, killing the navigator instantly, and leaving the pilot seriously injured. Corporal Pearson entered the burning fuselage, released the pilot from his harness and removed him from the immediate area around the aircraft. After she was 27 metres (30 yards) from the aircraft, a bomb exploded. She flung herself on top of the pilot to protect him. After medical staff had removed the pilot, she went back to the plane to look for the fourth crew member, the radio operator. She found him dead. For her deeds, Pearson was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal (EGM). The full citation for the award was published in the London Gazette on 19 July 1940 and reads:

Pearson joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a medical orderly shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Joan Daphne Mary Pearson, GC (25 May 1911 – 25 July 2000) was a Women's Auxiliary Air Force officer during the Second World War and one of only thirteen women recipients of the George Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry not in the face of an enemy that can, or could, be awarded to a citizen of the United Kingdom or commonwealth.