One hundred years ago George Harry Wyatt won Worcestershire's first Victoria Cross in the First World War

On the pitch black evening of August 26, 1914 and under a hail of bullets from an attacking force of more than 1,000 Germans, he twice dashed forward alone to extinguish a blazing haystack, which was lighting up the position of his besieged detachment of Coldstream Guards near the village of Landrecies in Northern France.

A couple of days later he was at it again. Shot in the head and with blood pouring down his face into his eyes, he defied orders to go to the rear and continued returning fire to protect his colleagues

George Wyatt had been born in Britannia Road, Worcester, on September 5, 1886, the son of Arthur and Sarah Ann Wyatt. His father was a groom to a Worcester veterinary surgeon, but moved three years later to become a coachman at Hindlip Hall, in the employ of the Dowager Lady Hindlip.

Son George first went to school at Hindlip, sang in the local church choir and then attended the Holloway School at Droitwich. The family later moved to Hadzor, near Droitwich, even though his father continued to work at Hindlip Hall.

Wyatt's ambition was always to join the Army and this he did at the age of 18 in November 1904. A burly six-footer, he enlisted in the Coldstream Guards and served for nearly four years, half the time in Egypt.

On discharge, he joined the police in Barnsley, Yorkshire and later transferred to Doncaster, but then came the outbreak of war in 1914. He was called up into the Coldstream Guards as a reservist on August 5, 1914 and was to win the VC within a month

The supreme honour was awarded for two separate acts of valour. During the Battle of Mons, the lance corporal was with a detachment of Coldstream Guards which came under night-time attack on August 25 from an estimated force of 1,000 Germans. The Guards officers in charge of the detachment were bayoneted and its machine-gun team killed, and the entire British positions were suddenly illuminated when a haystack caught fire. Under a constant hail of bullets, George Wyatt went within 25 yards of the German front line to put out the flames single-handed. Even when the haystack re-ignited, he returned again to douse it.

A few days later, while involved in a rearguard action in a forest, George Wyatt was wounded in the head but continued firing at the enemy until he could no longer see through the blood streaming down his face. A medical officer bound his wound and told him to go to the rear, but he at once returned to the firing line and continued to fight.

He became the first VC in the Coldstream Guards since the Crimean War and was also awarded the Russian Cross.

At the time of his exploits, his parents were living at the Pear Tree Inn, Hindlip, and it was a reporter from Berrow's Worcester Journal who first broke the news to them of their son's VC. They were naturally overjoyed.

George himself was to tell the local paper a few months later: "How did I put the fire out? Oh I jumped on it and dragged some equipment over it. As for the later incident, I got hit in the head and went on firing. That's all."

George Wyatt went up through the ranks to sergeant and was also to win another gallantry medal for his exploits, the Cross of the Order of St George, awarded by Russia for "undaunted courage". After the war, he returned to police service in Yorkshire, retiring in 1934 and taking up a smallholding. He died at Doncaster in 1964, at the age of 77.