Description:Vickers died on the 27th July 1944. The obituary is from the Birmingham Mail. use the zoomify tab to read the original cutting, the transcription of which reads as follows:
Lance-Corporal Arthur Vickers of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who was believed to be one of the last Birmingham V.C.'s, has died in a sanatorium. He won the award while serving on the Western Front with the 2nd Battalion of the County Regiment, when he stood up under heavy fire to cut enemy barbed wire.
Lance-Corporal Vickers, whose home was in Farm Street, Hockley, had been employed by Messers Lucas's Ltd since 1935 as a millwright's mate. The Birmingham Citizen's Society is arranging the funeral.
The exploits which won L-Cpl Vickers the V.C. was described in the following terms by the then Lord Mayor of Birmingham (Alderman Neville Chamberlain), when the City Council honoured him by the presentation of a framed illuminated address in 1916. The Lord Mayor was describing the scene on September 25 during operations before Hulloch:-
"Few acts can have been finer than the one performed by Lance-Cpl Vickers. In the face of almost certain death, he voluntarily went out in broad daylight, in the face of murderous shell and rifle fire, and cut the barbed wire which was holding up his battalion. The official record states that his deed contributed materially to the success of the operations upon that day".
At the time he won the award, Lance-Corporal Vickers was a single man, aged 33 years, and resided with his sister, Mrs Amy Atkins, of Park Road, Aston. He was born in Gosta Green. He had to visit six recruiting offices in Birmingham in August 1914, beofre he was accepted for the army owing to short stature.