In the September 2023 edition of Lion Online, we profiled Bruce Dowding (OW1932), a former Wesley College student, teacher and war hero.
Dowding arrived in Paris in 1938 to study French at the Sorbonne but joined the British Army as an interpreter when war broke out and was captured near Calais in 1940. He escaped a POW camp and under the alias André Mason and worked for British Intelligence organisation MI9, organising the exfiltration of hundreds of Allied servicemen to Spain before being recaptured, tried and executed by the Nazis in 1943.
In 2024, the Toulouse Museum uncovered a previously lost recommendation memo from the Museum of the Order of Liberation indicating Dowding had been posthumously nominated for the French Resistance Medal in 1947 by General Charles de Gaulle for his extraordinary courage and service in occupied France.
Following this discovery, the Toulouse Museum worked with the French Government to have the medal formally presented to Dowding’s family in Australia, finally recognising his remarkable contribution... long overdue recognition for Wesley's wartime hero.
The Dowding family have donated the medal along with other memorabilia and papers to the Shrine of Remembrance.