going to war, he later wrote "In August Germany invaded Belgium, we had a treaty with Belgium, so we all stopped what we were doing and went off to war. It was as simple as that". He was awarded the Victoria Cross for action in 1915 and the Croix de Guerre (Belgium) in 1918. He won the Victoria Cross for his actions on 14 October 1915 when he held a barrier across a trench in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, France against heavy German bomb (grenade) attacks, ordering a second barrier to be built behind him in order to secure the safety of the trench, regardless of the fact that his own retreat would be cut off, and holding back the enemy for long enough for a second barrier to be completed. His brother Burnell was killed in action in 1917. In June 1918 he commanded a battalion in the Second Battle of the Marne for which he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. Inter-war years After the war he returned to Oxford and took a pass degree in French, European history and law in 1919. He qualified as a solicitor in 1923 and by 1926 he was a partner in the leading London law firm of Slaughter and May. He specialised in the legal aspects of large financial operations, many of which had international dimensions. In 1930 he was one of the first to take the five-day Imperial Airways commercial flight from the UK to India and during the 1930s he was also involved in negotiating the extension of the German debt. In 1938 he established and chaired the 'Association for Service and Reconstruction. The above initiative put him in touch with a number of people who met regularly in a group called 'The Moot' that also included Joe Oldham, Karl Mannheim, Reinhard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Middleton Murry, T. S. Eliot, Michael Polanyi, Sir Walter Moberly and Adolph Lowe. The Moot itself grew out of a conference on Church, Community and State held in Oxford in 1937. World War II Vickers served in World War II; he was re-commissioned as a colonel, and was seconded as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence. From 1941 to 1945 he was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff. He was also a member of the London Passenger Transport Board