Herbert Cecil Pugh, (2 November 1898 – 5 July 1941), usually called Cecil Pugh, was a Congregational Church minister and is the only clergyman to have received the George Cross. He was a South African who served in the First World War as a South African Army medical orderly and in the Second World War as a Royal Air Force chaplain. Pugh died in 1941 by remaining aboard a sinking troop ship to minister to trapped and wounded military personnel.
Life
thumb|upright|Christ Church, [[Friern Barnet, where Pugh was pastor from 1927 to 1939]]
thumb| before becoming a [[Troopship|troop ship]]
Pugh was the second of seven children of Harry Walter and Jane (Douglas) Pugh. He was born in 1898 in Johannesburg and attended Jeppe High School for Boys. In the First World War in 1917–19 he was a medical orderly in France with the South African Field Ambulance. and daughter Fiona. His passage to Takoradi was aboard the troop ship to Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Anselm was a cargo and passenger liner that had been converted into a troop ship by designating its passenger accommodation as officers' quarters and turning her holds into accommodation for other ranks. It had capacity for about 500 troops, but on this occasion was heavily overloaded with about 1,200 British Army, Royal Marines and RAF personnel. The 175 RAF personnel