Medical officer and PoW who survived a 500-mile trek to freedom in war-torn Italy to become the Army’s Director of Surgery
Taken prisoner by Rommel’s Afrika Korps during the battle of Gazala while medical officer of 4th Royal Tank Regiment, Norman Rogers gave his first attention to the British wounded brought into a German field hospital. He then began a tedious journey to prison camp at Fontanellato in northern Italy. His escape from there, when the Italians left the camp unguarded after the armistice of September 1943, was the start of a 48-day trek southwards to where the US 5th Army had reached and return to duty as a regimental medical officer (RMO) in the Northwest Europe campaign.
Qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1939, Rogers volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and was granted an emergency commission before going to France with 131 Field Ambulance. He was mentioned in despatches for his care of the wounded during the withdrawal to Dunkirk and evacuation. His service in the North African campaign began as RMO of the 4th Royal Tanks when they landed as part of a troop rotation at the besieged port of Tobruk in September 1941.
The following May, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel attacked the 8th Army’s Gazala Line by a moonlight flanking move with one motorised and two armoured divisions — instead of against the British centre as expected. Despite the ensuing confusion, Rommel failed to reach the Mediterranean coast and lost a third of his precious tanks. But General Neil Ritchie, commanding the 8th Army, pulled back towards the Egyptian frontier. Unable to keep pace with the tanks as they withdrew to the Tobruk perimeter, Rogers was captured with the regimental and other casualties.
His trek from Fontanellato began on September 8, 1943, with the prisoners marching out of the prison camp in formed companies. Appointed medical officer for his company, he fell in with Captain Arthur Jones, later MP for Northamptonshire South and then for Daventry, whom he knew only vaguely from camp life, but they were to reach safety together and become lifelong friends. Leaving the camp through maize fields, the former prisoners saw a German Ju52 flying low and sought cover under sheltering vines; local peasants then arrived with food and news that German troops had reached the empty camp and were searching the countryside.
A decision having been made to head south in small groups, Rogers and Jones set off with a local girl as their initial guide. Throughout their long hike to safety, they were struck by the help and kindness of the Italian peasants, always ready to share what food they had. Halting for the night in a farm, Rogers and Jones assessed their options of heading north for Switzerland and internment, building a hide and waiting for the Allies to reach them or making for La Spezia — some 60 miles to the southwest — and wait for the expected Allied landing.
Encouraged by scarcity of German troops, the helpfulness of the peasants — with whom Rogers conversed easily, having fluent Italian — and a report, subsequently proved inaccurate, that the Allies had reached Rome, the pair decided to skirt La Spezia and follow the line of the Appennines towards the Bologna-Florence highway. Having crossed that, they began moving more cautiously on being warned that the carabinieri had arrested two British soldiers near Borgo di San Lorenzo, from where they could see the haze over Florence to the south.
Using a weir to cross the River Arno, they were welcomed into the home of a young count, from whom they learnt that the Allies were unlikely to reach Florence before the winter. They continued southeastwards, avoiding towns and roads, until reaching the war zone. After picking their way around German roadblocks they were led through an unmarked minefield by an old crone who had watched the mines being laid. Crossing between the lines in dead ground, they reached the forward positions of the 36th (“Texas”) Division. It was October 25; with many changes of course over a tortuous route up and downhill, they had walked 500 miles in 48 days.
Having returned to England for Christmas leave, Rogers was posted as RMO to the 1st Black Watch and accompanied the battalion throughout the Northwest Europe campaign, during which he was wounded and twice mentioned in dispatches. After demobilisation he qualified FRCS and became a house surgeon at Barts, surgical registrar at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and then the senior surgical registrar at the Queen Elizabeth and General Hospitals in Birmingham until 1956. At that point he decided to return to the Army — partly because of the lack of suitable openings for his discipline but more because he missed the Service ethos and camaraderie. He worked as a surgeon in military hospitals in England, Cyprus and Germany, where he became consultant surgeon for the Army of the Rhine and finally the Army’s director of surgery with the rank of major-general. He was a Queen’s honorary surgeon from 1969 until his retirement in 1973.
On leaving the Army, he went to Guy’s Hospital as consultant in emergency medicine, later to be elected by his colleagues as clinical superintendent there. On retirement in 1983, he returned to the British Military Hospital in Iserlohn, Germany, as a civilian surgeon to the Army, finally spending three years in the same appointment at the British Military Hospital in Münster.
Norman Charles Rogers was the son of Wing Commander C. W. Rogers, RAF, and was educated at Victoria College, Alexandria, and the Imperial Service College, Windsor, before beginning his medical training at Barts. He had a wide-ranging interest in literature, particularly French novels in the original, and naval and military history. He loved languages, speaking Italian fluently with a working knowledge of French and Arabic, the latter from his school days at Victoria College. His love of walking became severely restricted after an operation on his leg for skin carcinoma two years before he died.
He married Dr Pamela Rose in 1954. She survives him with two sons and a daughter.
Major-General N. C. Rogers, surgeon, was born on October 16, 1916. He died on February 19, 2011, aged 94
RAF navigator and SOE agent who was shot down over Italy, escaped from a PoW camp and reported on partisan activity
In the early years of the Second World War Italy did not prove susceptible to the sort acts of sabotage and subversion that the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had orchestrated in the German-occupied countries of north-west Europe and Scandinavia.
Although never universally popular, the Fascists maintained widespread control until the armistice of September 1943 when partisan groups of varied allegiance began to spring up north of the Allied-German battlefronts snaking across the peninsula.
“Rip” Rippingale was able to familiarise himself with the strengths and limitations of several such groups while hiding in the mountains after his escape from a prisoner of war camp. Having eventually reached the Allied lines, he was asked by SOE to volunteer to return to act as a link with them during the final stages of the war in Europe.
He had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939 and was commissioned following training as an observer-navigator. While serving with 45 Squadron equipped with Blenheim light bombers in the Western Desert in November 1941, his aircraft was shot down by an Me109 while returning from a sortie near El Adem. Injured in the arm and shoulder and badly burnt, he spent four months in hospital before being sent to a prison camp near Parma in northern Italy.
On hearing of the September 1943 armistice, the Italian guards left the camp, allowing Rippingale and several companions to escape before German guards arrived. Anxious to quit the open plain of the River Po, they made for the hills and joined a group of partisans. It was there that he met Maria Berni, a local partisan, who was to become his wife two years later.
He accompanied the partisans on operations against German lines of communication and military installations until the autumn of 1944, then took the opportunity of a lull in the fighting to head south for the forward areas of the US 5th Army near Bologna, where the Americans had paused for the winter. He finally crossed the lines to safety in November 1944.
On repatriation to England he was invited to join SOE’s No 1 Special Force in Italy, possibly with a view to rejoining his future fiancée still with the partisans. After parachute training, induction into SOE techniques of sabotage and subversion, and promotion to flight lieutenant, he returned to Italy in time to be dropped near Piacenza, some 20 miles northwest of Parma, in February 1945.
As part of SOE’s Operation Insulin, his mission was to arrange for the air-supply of the partisans in the region and, rather than allow them to waste lives attacking German installations, set them to work clearing obstacles and preparing landing strips for aircraft for the possible landing of troops as part of the Allied spring offensive.
This activity brought an energetic German reaction, and difficulties of dropping supplies to the partisans due to the winter weather conditions led to deterioration in their morale and motivation. Communism, already the driving force in some partisan groups of the so-called Garibaldi Brigades, was also filtering westwards from north-eastern Italy, where the locally settled Slovene population was coming under increasing pressure to spread the communist creed from Tito’s partisans across the frontier.
As political considerations began to predominate with the end of the war in sight, Rippingale and his companions of No 1 Special Force in the northwest of Italy were kept busy monitoring communist influence in the partisan groups to which they were attached until the Allies’ push into the valley of the Po in April 1945 concluded the campaign. In consequence he remained in Italy until July 1945. His appointment as MBE in the military division was gazetted on June 1, 1945, in recognition of his services since escaping from captivity in September 1943.
Frederick Lionel Rippingale was born in London and educated at Erith County School. After SOE debriefing and demobilisation in December 1945 he returned to his prewar employment with the Royal Dutch Shell Group, eventually joining the board before his retirement in 1975. He travelled widely in the company’s interest but never lost his love of all things Italian, opera in particular.
In 1945 he married Maria Berni. She predeceased him and in 1982 he married Claudia Maddocks. He is survived by her, two sons from his first marriage and a stepson.
Frederick Rippingale, MBE, RAF navigator, SOE agent and oil executive, was born on September 20, 1916. He died on January 6, 2011, aged 94
Destroyer captain who was awarded the DSO for taking charge of his ship after her CO had been killed
As a 23-year-old junior lieutenant in command of the destroyer Forester on Russian convoy duty, Jack Bitmead was awarded the DSO and two years’ advance in seniority. In May 1942 the Forester, with Bitmead as second-in-command, sailed from Murmansk as escort for the returning convoy QP11 which contained the cruiser Edinburgh, carrying a large quantity of gold bullion. Edinburgh was badly damaged by a U-boat torpedo, but was able to make a slow return towards Murmansk escorted by Forester, Foresight and two Russian destroyers. Two German destroyers now attacked the almost unmanageable Edinburgh. In this spirited action one was badly damaged and abandoned, and subsequently sank. But Edinburgh was hit by another torpedo and her crew were taken off. When this was accomplished she was sunk by one of the British destroyers.
Sustaining three direct hits from the other German destroyer, Forester suffered damage to a boiler room and gun mountings, while the bridge area became a shambles, with her captain and 11 others killed and nine wounded. Bitmead immediately took command. The action had the effect of distracting attention from the convoy which arrived at Reykjavik safely. Both Forester and Foresight returned to Murmansk for repairs.
After rough repairs, Bitmead, in company with three other destroyers, then escorted the damaged cruiser Trinidad from Murmansk. On May 14 they managed to beat off attacks by 25 Junkers 88 bombers and ten torpedo bombers, but as dusk was falling a lone Junkers 88 using low cloud hit Trinidad with one bomb, starting a large fire which by midnight was out of control. Bitmead brought the Forester alongside and took off 70 wounded, 30 of whom were stretcher cases, and other survivors amid a firework display of exploding “ready use” ammunition. He reverted to second-in-command in August, having received numerous signals and letters praising his actions.
Born in 1919, Jack Bitmead was trained at the nautical college at Pangbourne and first went to sea in 1936 in the training cruiser Frobisher, followed by nearly two years in the cruiser York.
On the day war was declared, he was appointed to the destroyer Broke as navigating officer. Initially employed on convoy duty in the North Sea and Atlantic and in the Norwegian campaign, Broke took part in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from various French ports. Bitmead was awarded the Polish Cross of Valour for the evacuation of Polish soldiers. In February 1941 he was appointed second-incommand of the destroyer Georgetown on Atlantic and Iceland convoys. After Forester, he was selected for a pilot Admiralty scheme, ultimately unsuccessful, to raise the average age of submarine commanding officers by injecting experienced non-submariner officers into an accelerated six-month training pipeline. Bitmead joined the famous Fighting Tenth submarine squadron in Malta and survived four patrols in the central Mediterranean.
Bitmead next commanded the Hunt class destroyer Meynell and escorted convoys to the D-Day beaches, to the Humber and Antwerp until VE-Day.
Bitmead’s postwar career included many seagoing commands, including the destroyer Mendip, for which he had to train a Chinese Nationalist crew. In 1948 he commanded the new destroyer Broadsword, and then in 1955 the frigate Veryan Bay. In the rank of captain, he commanded the destroyer Duchess.
Ashore, he served in the Admiralty intelligence division and as an appointments officer in the personnel department and subsequently spent a year on the Canadian staff course which included tours to the Middle East, followed by a pleasant Nato post in Naples.
Back in England he was vice-president of the Admiralty Interview Board. His final tour was Captain of the Fleet for the Far East Fleet, an ancient title perhaps best described as an ombudsman for seagoing officers and men.
His wife, Anne Thérèse, died in 1995. There were no children.
Captain Jack Bitmead, DSO, destroyer captain, was born on January 28, 1919. He died on December 21, 2010, aged 91
Wartime bomb and mine disposal officer and one of the few to survive the hazardous operation to clear Britain’s coastline
Towards the end of a wartime and immediately postwar career in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during which he was responsible for making safe 240 mines and other explosive devices, Lieutenant Noel Cashford was appointed MBE in 1946. The period in the immediate aftermath of the war was a particularly busy one for mine clearance around the coasts of the UK and many of his colleagues lost their lives after the end of hostilities. He was one of 25 of the original 60 naval mine disposal officers to survive the war.
Noel Cashford was born in 1922 at Tunbridge Wells, one of twin brothers, both of whom joined the Sea Cadets while still at school. A sister joined the WAAF and another brother entered the Tank Corps at the outbreak of war during which Cashford’s twin served as a Mosquito pilot while Noel joined the RNVR as an ordinary seaman.
Posted to HMS Pembroke at Chatham, he initially trained for submarines, but poor eyesight closed this career path, and he was assigned instead to “Special Duties”. He had no inkling of what this might involve until a senior officer told him: “Well done Cashford, you are now a member of the explosive elite of the Royal Navy. We are going to teach you how to render safe bombs, mines, sea mines, parachute mines and anything that goes bang, and what’s more we’re going to teach you to do it underwater.”
Cashford admitted to not being immediately enthusiastic, but there was no help for it. He was trained at a rambling pile, Holmbrook Hall in Cumberland, which had been commandeered by the Admiralty and commissioned as a “stone frigate” HMS Volcano, for the training of bomb disposal and mine clearance officers. From there he went to HMS Vernon, headquarters of the Naval Bomb and Mine Disposal Unit at Portsmouth, after which he underwent diving training.
After qualifying, he was for the most part stationed along the South Coast apart from periods on the West Coast of Scotland and in the battleship Rodney, until his demobilisation in 1947. During this time Cashford had a number of lucky escapes. Of the 100 or so sea mines Cashford was called out to try to render safe at least ten exploded while he was on his way to the task. On one occasion a 1,000lb booby-trapped mine failed to explode because during its manufacture in Germany a piece of celluloid film had been placed (almost certainly deliberately by a slave worker) across the contacts. Such acts of sabotage were not uncommon in the German munitions industry where slave labour was employed right up to the level of V2 manufacture.
After being demobbed in 1947 Cashford worked from the mid-1950s until his retirement in 1987 as a salesman for the Kenning Motor Group in Southampton, eventually becoming the company’s training officer. In retirement he gave talks to a variety of organisations about his wartime bomb disposal and mine clearance work.
Well aware that he had enjoyed the good fortune and skill to survive his hazardous occupation as some had not, Cashford knew the thin line — which might range from debilitating stress on an individual or an accident of sheer bad luck — that separated survival from a violent death. He recalled that on one occasion two men were clearing mines in a fenced-off area when a dog wriggled under the wire, ran towards them and stood on a mine, which blew it up. Falling debris from this blast set off six more mines which killed the disposal men, too.
He was particularly haunted by the case of Sub-Lieutenant Walter Prior, who had confessed to him, while both were on a course at HMS Vernon, that he was suffering from acute stress as a result of the job, but would not hear of confiding the problem to higher authority in the hope of being taken off his duties, in spite of Cashford’s earnest suggestion that he should do that for his own sake.
When Cashford later heard that Prior had been killed while wading out to a mine that was floating ashore at Bognor Regis, Cashford wondered: “It was a written rule that no effort was to be made to render safe or secure a mine that was still afloat. Was deep-seated stress the cause of this officer’s disregard for this rule?” Cashford established an annual service at Aldwick, Bognor Regis, honouring Sub-Lieutenant Prior.
He also played a leading role in establishing a memorial to 26 Royal Engineers personnel who had lost their lives clearing unexploded ordnance from the coast of Norfolk between Yarmouth and Holkham between 1944 and 1953, because these were not honoured elsewhere. The memorial, in the form of a 1,000lb German bomb case on the cliff top at Mundeseley, Norfolk, was unveiled in 2004.
Cashford published several books about wartime bomb disposal work: two volumes of memoirs, All Mine! and Ticking Clock! and two more of the recollections of others who worked on mine and bomb clearance, All Theirs and BANG. A third volume of the memories of others, Courage Beyond Duty, is due for posthumous publication.
Cashford is survived by his wife, Brenda, whom he married in 1945, and by their son. Another son died in 1980.
Lieutenant Noel Cashford, MBE, wartime bomb and mine disposal officer, was born on September 1, 1922. He died on January 12, 2011, aged 88
Artillery officer who displayed great bravery to maintain ammunition supplies in North Africa and Italy
Jack Sewell’s war in North Africa and Italy as a gunner observation officer and then battery captain was an unremitting ordeal which he was lucky to survive. The citation for his MC suggests that he earned the decoration at least twice.
Commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1941, he joined 11th (Honourable Artillery Company) Regiment Royal Horse Artillery in the Western Desert shortly before El Alamein. His regiment had the US self-propelled 105mm gun nicknamed the “Priest” by the Eighth Army for its pulpit-like observation turret. The gun proved its worth at the second battle of Alamein, in October 1942, in which Sewell took part as a forward observation officer.
While the Afrika Corps deployed its self-propelled guns forward, the Eighth Army grouped them behind cover. Only the FOOs (forward observation officers) accompanied the tanks they were supporting, moving in modified Priests with the gun removed to allow space for extra radios and an artillery plotting table.
Initially part of the 1st Armoured Division, 11th RHA fought from El Alamein to Tunisia with Sewell acting as a FOO throughout. He directed the fire of his battery’s guns while under enemy retaliatory bombardment in the battles over the entire six months of bitter fighting as Rommel conducted a skilful withdrawal. His emergence unscathed was remarkable and his mention in dispatches seems scant reward for such hazardous service.
After the regiment’s arrival in Italy he became the battery captain, ready to take over if the battery commander was killed or wounded. His routine responsibility was for supply, including ammunition — so that the dreaded shout of “ammunition expended” would never be heard from his gun lines. This was another dangerous assignment, as the targeting of the enemy’s ammunition supply lines is a standard high priority fire task.
On April 6, 1945, during the Eighth Army’s preparation for the final offensive in Italy through the Argenta Gap, 11th RHA was ordered into a gun position opposite Cotignola to support the crossing of the River Senio by the 2nd New Zealand Division. The attack was resisted fiercely. The RHA’s positions were subjected to harassing machinegun fire as soon as darkness fell but Sewell led his resupply convoy over a bridge immediately targeted by enemy artillery. The road was hit many times but the bridge withstood the attack and Sewell’s battery received its vital ammunition. The battle opened on April 9 and for every night until the breakthrough on the 25th, Sewell led his supply train forward with ammunition, fuel and rations. Two days before the end, he drove his jeep through mortar and shellfire to reach an isolated observation post in the village of Correggio.
The citation for his Military Cross concluded with the words, “His example and leadership were an inspiration to all ranks of the battery.” He was mentioned in dispatches a second time for his conduct in Italy before the final and successful offensive. He commanded a battery of 11th RHA during the period the regiment served in Austria as part of the army of occupation.
John Alban Fane Sewell was born in Secunderabad where his father was serving as District Superintendent of the Indian Imperial Police. His family had a tradition of government service and a forebear had been Commander-in-Chief in India. He was educated at Eastbourne College and Jesus College, Oxford, where he read modern languages and received his MA.
After a year with the army of occupation, he transferred to Allied Military Government in Austria and served there until demobilisation, when he joined BP. He later became BP’s area manager in Lagos and in Hamburg. He then served as secretary-general of the European Gasoil Producers Association in Paris until his final retirement to Dorset in the 1970s.
He was for many years the chairman of the HAC Veterans Association.
He married Margaret (Peggy) Knight in 1941 when she was serving with the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. She predeceased him. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.
J. A. F. Sewell, MC, artillery officer and BP executive, was born on September 20, 1917. He died on January 22, 2011, aged 93
