Heroic Shepherd

Last week the official London Gazette announced that "The King has been graciously pleased to give . . . the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" to Fred Mitchell, Head Shepherd, North Somerset, for "brave conduct in Civil Defence."

Gnarled, dimple-chinned Fred Mitchell, 45, was watching his sheep with a crook and a sharp-muzzled sheep dog one clear, shriveling-cold January night at the Home Farm outside Abbots Leigh village near Bristol. The sirens screamed at 5 o'clock, and Shepherd Mitchell was immediately surrounded by a blaze of 20th-century horror. Incendiaries fired his straw-and-wattle lambing pens, sheltering 34 ewes and lambs. High explosives followed the incendiaries and scared the wits out of the sheep dog, who promptly went A.W.O.L. for 24 hours. Alone, Mitchell fought the fire till the flames crackled near a terrified ewe, who tried to shield her lamb. He seized the lamb and rushed through the smoke, followed by the baaing mamma, left them in an open field which was eerily lighted by fires and constant explosions. Six times he returned to the blazing pens, took the lambs in his arms and coaxed the panic-stricken ewes to follow.

At midnight he went to another part of the field "to speak words of comfort to 107 ewes due to lamb in a week." The bombs started to drop all around him. After the raiders passed, he returned to his whitewashed cottage. As he opened the back door, a bomb exploded in his front garden and blasted the roof, walls and windows, but he was unharmed. Fred Mitchell, O.B.E., saved a lot of mutton for Britain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.