Peter Pearce, one of the first to receive the new Elizabeth Emblem on behalf of his father, said that November 29, 1957, was a date that he would never forget.

Mr Pearce, then a sprightly 13-year-old, had woken in the family home in Wheatsheaf Close, Maidstone, that morning to find his father had already left for work.

There was nothing unusual about that, as his father was an Assistant Divisional Commander with the Kent Fire Brigade and was often called to work at unusual times.

Young Peter went to school at The Elms in London Road, Maidstone, and everything was as usual until just before lunchtime.

He said: “The teachers pulled me out of class and told me I was to go home straight away as my mother wanted to speak to me.”

Peter, did as he was told, walking into town, and then jumping on a bus to head towards Loose.

He said: “I knocked on the door. My mother opened it, and straight away said: ‘Your father’s dead!’”

Leslie Pearce, a fireman with 28 years’ service, was one of three firefighters and three civilians to die that day in what remains the worst disaster in the history of Kent Fire Brigade.

A nursing superintendent, making his early morning rounds at Oakwood Mental Hospital in Barming, had discovered a fire and summoned the brigade.

The psychiatric hospital then was a huge sprawling complex, with over 2,000 patients, complete with its own church, mortuary, graveyard and even a farm.

Maidstone Fire Station on the Loose Road received the 999 call at 6.40am and firemen were on the scene within minutes with two appliances and a turntable ladder.

On arrival, the brigade found hospital staff already fighting the fire with a jet, direct from a hydrant.

The fire was on the first floor in a block adjacent to wards containing 350 mentally ill patients who were in the process of being evacuated.

The call quickly changed to “make pumps six.”

The fire raged through the workshop wing, destroying the printer's shop, the library, a staff rest room and TV room, and it spread upwards into the roof.

Nevertheless, by 7.30am, the flames were out.

Three crews returned to base. Three remained on site to dampen down.

Adjacent to the section of the building where the fire had occurred was a brick-built ventilation tower, 115 ft in height.

Leslie Pearce had entered the building with some of the hospital staff to inspect the damage when at just after 10am, suddenly and without warning, the tower collapsed, burying him and nearly a dozen others.

Peter Pearce said: “Mr father had a younger brother, Sidney, also in the service.

“They had always been very close, growing up together and then working together in the fire service.”

“Sid was also among the crews fighting the fire at the hospital.

“When the tower collapsed - it just dropped like 9/11 - he and the other firemen dashed into the rubble to search for survivors.

“My father’s body had been carried through to the basement, and my uncle pulled the bricks off him with his bare hands to get him out.

“Sid was so shaken at his brother’s death, that he also then had to be taken to hospital.”

After receiving the mind-numbing news, Peter Pearce, now 80, remembers little more of that dreadful day, other than it had been the wife of the chief fire officer, John Fordham, who had called on his mother to deliver the terrible news and who had stayed to comfort the family.

But he said: “I remember far more vividly the day of the funeral, a week later, on December 5.

“The Brigade arranged a full service funeral.

“My father’s coffin and those of the other two firemen were carried through the streets on the back of a turntable ladder.

“The flowers followed on another appliance.

“The service was at All Saints, which was absolutely full to the gunnels with firemen and officers.”

Mr Pearce said: “My mother was a rock throughout it all. But there’s no doubt it changed our lives.

“For one thing, our house in Wheatsheaf Close was fire service accommodation.

“We had to get out and move to St Phillip’s Avenue.”

Mr Pearce admitted being in “a bit of a daze” for several years, leaving school at 16 and starting a five-year apprenticeship as a car mechanic at Rootes in Mill Street.

He said: “Eventually, I realised that I was fire brigade through and through.”

“Besides my father and uncle, my grandfather, Albert Pearce, had also been in the fire service.

“He joined the town’s brigade, back in 1903.

“He had retired in the 1930s, but then came back to help train the newly formed Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), serving throughout the war.

“I had grown up with the fire service, often calling in the station to meet my father.

“He would even sometimes take me with him, if he were called to a scene.”

So, in 1962, as soon as he was 18, Mr Pearce also joined the service.

He said: “Having already lost her husband, my mother was not keen, but she could see it was the only thing I wanted to do.”

He said: “There had been a period before the war when there were three Pearces on the same fire appliance - my grandfather, my father and my uncle.

“After I joined, there were again three Pearces on the same appliance - my uncle, his son (my cousin) David, and me.”

Mr Pearce served for 41 years, retiring as Divisional Officer Operations.

During that time, he attended all the major blazes in Maidstone, including the fire at the Kent Messenger offices in Week Street in 1968, the blaze at the Maidstone Hospital nurses’ home in 1975 and the destruction of Clarke’s furniture store in 1995.

He also sadly attended the fatal crash of a fire tender that had been responding to a shout in 1970 which had claimed the life of fireman Malcolm Farrow, 26.

Malcolm was the son of Albert Farrow, one of the two other firemen killed in the 1957 Barming fire.

It seems that serving in the fire brigade - now known as the Kent Fire and Rescue Service - was often very much a family affair.

Peter Pearce’s own son, Ian, followed him into the service.

The 49-year-old is now a crew commander at Maidstone Fire Station with 28 years’ service under his belt.

Although Peter Pearce retired in 2003, it means that between them four generations of his family have now been fighting fires in Maidstone for over 120 years.

Last week, Ian accompanied his father to Windsor Castle where the family were presented with an Elizabeth Emblem - a new medal created this year to recognise the sacrifice of police officers, firefighters and other public servants who have given their lives in the course of their duty.

Peter Pearce said: “It was a great privilege to meet the King. We were the fifth to receive the emblem, which Charles presented to me personally.

“He apologised that it had been so long coming and said there should have been some recognition of my father’s sacrifice years ago.”

“To be honest, I hadn’t expected anything.

“In those days, you never thought about that sort of thing when it happened. You just tried to get on and rebuild your life.

“Of course, every son thinks his father is great.

“But it was not until after I joined the service myself and worked with many people who had worked with my father that I discovered in just what high esteem he had been held.”

The other lives lost in the Barming hospital fire were those of Retained Fireman John Hawkes, 33, and Retained Fireman Albert Farrow, 44, both from the Maidstone Fire Station, as well as a nurse, the hospital printer and a Polish patient.

Six other firemen were injured in the collapse.

The blaze was subsequently discussed in the House of Commons, where the Minister for Health, Derek Walker-Smith expressed his “deepest sympathy with the relatives of those killed and injured in this tragic occurrence and my deep appreciation of the courage and devotion of all members of the hospital staff, the fire service, the Civil Defence and others engaged in the work of rescue.”

The Elizabeth Emblem, named after the late Queen, contains the words 'For a life given in service.'

It is a silver oval that incorporates a rosemary wreath and the Tudor Crown.

The Elizabeth Emblem is the civilian equivalent of the Elizabeth Cross, which recognises members of the UK Armed Forces who die in action or as a result of a terrorist attack.

Following an investigation, the cause of the Barming fire was found to have been a clothes iron, which had been left on overnight in the tailor's shop.