Alfred J. Askin

16 April 1929 – 29 July 2005 · Founder of this website

Alf, as he liked to be known, founded this website in 2000 and filled it, entry by entry, with everything he could discover about every holder of the Victoria Cross.

Alfred John Askin was born in Derby on 16 April 1929, his birth registered in the Derby South East sub-district on 24 May. As a boy he joined the Scouts, and the family still has his enrolment card bearing the Chief Scout's signature and his exhortation: "You are now a Scout. So, sleeves up — and tackle your job!" He did.

In 1943, as a young office boy at Rolls-Royce in Derby, he came across the name of Gunner Charles Edwin Stone VC MM while doing the records — the moment, he always said, that sparked his lifelong interest in the Victoria Cross.

He joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman, serving at RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan and at RAF Habbaniya in Iraq, where he qualified to ride at the station stables — the permit survives. Back in civilian life he returned to Rolls-Royce, working in the Experimental Department, which a friend from those days remembered as "the laughter centre of the works". His first car was a 1938 Morris 8, bought for two pounds ten shillings. He retired as a salvage engineer.

Alf married Jean, and they had three children — Kim, Mitch and Andrée — nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Many a weekend would find him somewhere in the country photographing a grave or a memorial, or reading in the Admiralty Library. He gathered around 250 books, thousands of newspaper cuttings and a huge correspondence, and he answered the hundreds of e-mails, letters and telephone calls that reached him every month from families, researchers and regimental associations. He designed and printed citation certificates for VC holders' families. He was very proud of his work.

Alf died peacefully at 5.20 pm on Friday 29 July 2005 with his family at his bedside, before he could finish putting all 1,352 holders on the site. This rebuilt site completes the register in his memory, keeping every one of his 1,251 entries exactly as he wrote them.

It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of Alf Askin, the founder of this site. He died peacefully at 5.20pm Friday 29th July 2005 with his family at his bedside.

He loved gathering the information for this web site and helping anyone who needed it regards recipients of the Victoria Cross. He had gained many friends through his work on this site and thought dearly of them all. A special mention has to be made regards Adrian, a gentleman who my Dad had the greatest respect for and he thought of him as a very dear friend.

We hope to continue my Dad's work and in time gain the experience my Father had in this field. This is surely a fitting tribute for all his hard work. Hopefully this site will remain in his memory and I thank you all for best wishes sent during his illness.

God Bless You All

Andrée Askin, 2005

The VC website is far from over. His dream was to list as much information as possible on the Victoria Cross holders, and this will be carried on by Rhys (his grandson) and the rest of the family.

Rhys Adams, 2005

Alf's own papers

Documents kept by his son Kim Askin, who shared them for this page in 2026.

"Died laughing"

The family's notice in the Derby paper began, in Alf's own spirit, with two words that said everything about him:

ASKIN — Alfred John. Died laughing at the Nightingale Macmillan Continuing Care Unit on July 29th 2005, aged 76 years. Now with his beloved Jean. Much loved dad of Kim, Mitch and Andree, dearly loved grandad of Zoie, Jenni, Ashley, Tiffany, Rhys, Lauren, Kym and Jack, great grandad of twins Lily and Fern, Charlie, twins Adam and Mark and brother of Tom, Eileen, Carol and the late Nev.

Funeral Thursday August 11th. Service and cremation 10.45am at Markeaton Crematorium. No flowers by request please, but if desired, donations in lieu made payable to the Nightingale Macmillan Continuing Care Unit.

Death notice, August 2005

A friend and former colleague from the Experimental Department at Rolls-Royce wrote to the family a few days later. "What a character, and a man it was a privilege to know and count as a friend," he said. "The obituary is typical of his sense of humour — I also think he had a hand in it along the way. Strangely, the last time I spoke to him we were joking as usual, and he asked me, 'What are you going to have played when you go?' I told him I had already got my copy of Harold Melvin's If You Don't Know Me By Now. He roared with laughter." He recalled too a late-1950s family outing to the Leamington Spa illuminations on which someone dropped his car keys down a drain — and selling Alf his first car, the Morris 8, "for the princely sum of two pounds ten shillings".

Alf's last visit

In April 2005 Alf made a final trip to Portsmouth and the Royal Naval Museum with his grandsons Rhys and Jack, Rhys's ex-partner Samantha and his great-grandson Charlie. His photographs from the National Memorial Arboretum and of the graves he visited are in the galleries.

Keeping his work alive

Alf's original site noted that donations for refurbishing VC graves could be made to the Magnolia Trust. Today the Victoria Cross Trust restores VC graves across the country, and you can help keep Alf's research online by sponsoring a page.

Explore Alf's register → See Alf's original website →

The site exactly as Alf left it in 2005 — frames, yellow pages and all — is preserved at old.victoriacross.co.uk.