Oldest living holder of the Victoria Cross

Eric Wilson, 96, who had been the oldest living holder of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest combat honor, died Dec. 23 in Stowell, England, according to obituaries published Tuesday in the Times of London and the Daily Telegraph.

Wilson died 68 years after he was “posthumously” awarded the medal by officials who thought he had been killed in action while fighting Italian troops in North Africa.

He was commanding a company of the Somaliland Camel Corps when Italian forces attacked their position in what was then British Somaliland. Italy had declared war only the day before. The citation with the Victoria Cross noted that Wilson was killed on Aug. 15, 1940, when enemy troops overran his machine gun emplacement.

In April 1941, however, he was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson and his fellow prisoners had nearly finished digging an escape tunnel when the Italian soldiers fled the camp ahead of the arrival of British troops.

Wilson later served in North Africa as adjutant of the Long Range Desert Group, a motorized force that harassed Italian positions. He later served in Burma as second in command of the 11th King’s African Rifles.

Wilson, who was born Oct. 2, 1912, at Sandown on the Isle of Wight, retired from the army in 1949 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and became a colonial officer in Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), which became independent in 1961.