Arturo "Arthur" Fanconi, (28 March 1906 â 28 June 1944) was a Swiss confectioner who was posthumously awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (equivalent to the George Cross) after saving lives in a minefield while acting as a Royal Navy sick berth attendant.
Fanconi was born on 28 March 1906 in Tonbridge, Kent, England, to Giulio Fanconi and Anna Fanconi ( Shumacher). He was a second generation Swiss immigrant via his parents, who were from Poschiavo, Grisons, Switzerland. He grew up in Ilminster, Somerset, where his parents ran a café. He worked with his family as a confectioner and pastry chef before the Second World War. He never married.
As a Swiss national and due to his occupation, he was exempt from conscription. However, in 1943, he volunteered for the medical branch of the Royal Navy. At the time of his death, Fanconi was attached to HMS Odyssey. This was not a ship but a stone frigate associated with Combined Operations. On D-Day (6 June 1944), he was present at Utah Beach where United States' troops landed. He was serving as the sick berth attendant to a Navy mobile radar unit that operated on the beach itself.
On 28 June 1944, Fanconi was killed in action while providing medical aid to American troops caught in a minefield in Quineville, Normandy. In May 1945, he was posthumously awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving in Gold for saving the lives of two injured men, before being fatally injured while in an attempting to save a third. He was the final person to be awarded the Albert Medal in Gold before it was subsumed into the George Cross in 1971. He is buried in Bayeux war cemetery.
The medal was brought to the Antiques Roadshow in 2024, and was valued at between ã20,000 and ã25,000.