Pocket. By mid-August Watkins, commanding "B" Company in his battalion, which had by now been transferred from the 160th Brigade to the 158th Brigade, was one officer in a group leading an assault on a German machine gun post. After the other officers were killed in the approach, Watkins continued to lead the group, leading a bayonet charge against 50 armed enemy infantry and then single-handedly taking out a machine-gun post to ensure the safety of his unit. He was the first Welsh member of the British Army to be awarded a VC during the Second World War. His citation read: Watkins' active service ended in October 1944 when he was badly wounded in the battle to liberate the Dutch city of 'sHertogenbosch, where a memorial service was held for him in St. John's Cathedral in 2007. He rarely spoke about the war. Of the event which led to him being awarded the VC he simply stated, in a 1955 radio interview: He stated in another interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2001: Wales rugby coach Graham Henry had Watkins' citation pinned up on the wall of the Welsh changing room before Six Nations encounters. Watkins' VC is on display in the Lord Ashcroft Gallery in the Imperial War Museum. Career Watkins later achieved the rank of major, and on leaving the Army, studied law. He was called to the bar (became a barrister) at the Middle Temple in 1948. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1965, and in 1966-67 was Counsel to the Tribunal on the inquiry into the Aberfan disaster, which happened a few miles from his birthplace. Watkins was deputy chairman of Radnorshire Quarter Sessions between 1962 and 1971, and of Carmarthenshire Quarter Sessions from 1966 until 1971. He was Recorder of Merthyr Tydfil between 1968 and 1970 and of Swansea during 1970 and 1971. He was Leader of the Wales and Chester Circuit from 1970–71. In 1971, he was appointed to the High Court bench, where he sat in the Family Division between 1971 and 1974, and thereafter, until 1980, in the Queen's Bench Division. He was a Presiding Judge of the Wales and Chester Circuit from 1975 until he was promoted to the Court of Appeal (receiving the customary appointment to the Privy Council) in 1980. He became the first Senior Presiding Judge in 1983. Lord Lane appointed him Deputy Chief Justice in 1988, a