Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut
Äàòà 22.08.2011 16:27:28
Ðóáðèêè WWII; Ñïåöñëóæáû; Àðìèÿ; ÂÂÑ;

[2Chestnut] Âîåííûå íåêðîëîãè èç áðèòàíñêèõ ãàçåò

Captain George Hunt
Officer of supreme daring who sank more enemy ships in the war than any British submariner

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8714485/Captain-George-Hunt.html

Sir John Rawlins
Navy doctor who pioneered new safety measures and tested them on himself

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8709908/Sir-John-Rawlins.html

Lt-Col Charles Boulter
Officer whose skilful deployment of anti-tank weapons helped to bring about the capture of Damascus

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8707543/Lt-Col-Charles-Boulter.html

Ctirad Masin
Czech anti-communist 'resistant’ who shot his way out of a vast Soviet dragnet to freedom

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8705202/Ctirad-Masin.html

Lt-Col Roderick Mackenzie
Gunner who took command of 23 SAS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8705186/Lt-Col-Roderick-Mackenzie.html

Warrant Officer Tom McLean
Outstanding gunner in RAF bombers whose tactical innovations took a heavy toll on the enemy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/air-force-obituaries/8702865/Warrant-Officer-Tom-McLean.html

Simon Warrender
Aristocratic rebel who torpedoed Scharnhorst and arrested a diamond-smuggling Portuguese princess

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8702850/Simon-Warrender.html

Vice-Admiral Sir David Loram
Naval officer who sent five tons of Russian gold to the bottom and was later an equerry to the Queen

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8696309/Vice-Admiral-Sir-David-Loram.html

Nancy Wake
Highly decorated SOE agent who ran escape lines to Spain and a large Maquis force before D-Day

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/8689765/Nancy-Wake.html

Doug Huxley
Soldier awarded the Military Medal and later Doorkeeper to the House of Lords

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8687413/Doug-Huxley.html

Flt Lt Geoffrey Osborn
Pilot who rescued four members of the crew from his crashed Halifax bomber

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/air-force-obituaries/8675953/Flt-Lt-Geoffrey-Osborn.html

Maj-Gen Sir Roy Redgrave
Soldier who saved the life of his wireless operator and later commanded UK forces in Hong Kong

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8673765/Maj-Gen-Sir-Roy-Redgrave.html

Flight Lieutenant Neill Cox
Pilot who won two DFCs and once took off while a WAAF was clinging to the tail of his Spitfire

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/air-force-obituaries/8671474/Flight-Lieutenant-Neill-Cox.html

General Abdel Fattah Younes
Confidant of Libya’s Col Gaddafi who defected to the rebel cause and became commander of its forces

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8671455/General-Abdel-Fattah-Younes.html

'Á³é â³äëóíàâ. Æîâòî-ñèí³ çíàìåíà çàòð³ïîò³ëè íà ñòàíö³¿ çíîâ'
Îò Àäìèíèñòðàöèÿ (Âèêòîð Êðåñòèíèí)
Ê Chestnut (22.08.2011 16:27:28)
Äàòà 23.08.2011 15:13:43

Ïðîøó äàâàòü àííîòàöèþ íà ðóññêîì ê òàêîìó îáèëüíîìó öèòèðîâàíèþ. (-)
Îò Chestnut
Ê Àäìèíèñòðàöèÿ (Âèêòîð Êðåñòèíèí) (23.08.2011 15:13:43)
Äàòà 23.08.2011 15:36:19

Õîðîøî, áóäó àííîòèðîâàòü

ïðîñòî ÿ óæå íåñêîëüêî ëåò äåëàþ ýòè ïîñòû â òàêîì ôîðìàòå, è ïîêà ÷òî âîçðàæåíèé íå áûëî. Íî òåì íå ìåíåå íà áóäóùåå èñïðàâëþñü

'Á³é â³äëóíàâ. Æîâòî-ñèí³ çíàìåíà çàòð³ïîò³ëè íà ñòàíö³¿ çíîâ'
Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (22.08.2011 16:27:28)
Äàòà 23.08.2011 12:47:01

Re: [2Chestnut] Âîåííûå...

>Captain George Hunt
> Officer of supreme daring who sank more enemy ships in the war than any British submariner

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8714485/Captain-George-Hunt.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3142003.ece

Wartime submarine commander decorated with two DSOs and two DSCs while still a young lieutenant

George Hunt, always known as Geordie, was one of the most successful and highly decorated submarine captains of the Second World War.

Allied naval dominance of the Mediterranean was maintained at great cost; German and Italian land-based aircraft frequently rendered surface ship operations unsustainable, thus putting enormous demands upon the Royal Navy’s submarines. Despite many losses from Axis anti-submarine vessels, minefields and aircraft, the “U” class submarines of the 10th Submarine Squadron, which were for a long time based in beleaguered Malta, played a prominent role.

While commanded by Hunt, the Ultor sank seven sizeable ships by torpedo and eight by gunfire as well as numerous caiques and coastal vessels. His record of hits versus number of torpedoes fired was remarkable, exciting the admiration of modern submariners. Ultor must have been getting in close; at one point the CinC Mediterranean remarked, “Considering the paucity of targets this year, the successes achieved by Ultor have been most outstanding, and are due to the consistently conspicuous daring of her Commanding Officer.”

George Edward Hunt’s father was an accountant who spent the whole of his working life in Uganda. Educated in Scotland, and for the Merchant Navy in the training ship Conway, young George saw little of his parents and first went to sea in the Henderson line to the Far East. As a Royal Naval Reserve officer, his training periods took him up the Yangtze, involved him in antipiracy operations and imbued him with an enthusiasm for the Royal Navy.

In 1936 he passed his second mate’s certificate and joined the Blue Funnel line. The next year, as one of those RNR officers known as the “Hungry Hundred”, he was accepted, in order to fill a shortage, for a permanent commission in the RN.

Hunt then qualified as a submariner and, at the outbreak of war, was the navigator of the Unity. In November, he married Phoebe Silson, another child of expatriate parents from South Africa.

After six war patrols Unity was run down by a Norwegian merchant ship off Blythe and sunk in April 1940, but Hunt, with nearly all the crew, survived. He was awarded a mention in despatches for his service in Unity.

Early in 1941 he was appointed second-in-command of the very successful submarine Proteus based at Alexandria and was awarded his first DSC. In March 1942 he flew back to the UK for the commanding officers’ course, on completion of which he was given command of the submarine H50, followed by command of the newly built Ultor.

Ultor arrived in the 10th Submarine squadron in May 1943 and was immediately successful, sinking a ship at anchor inside Augusta harbour in Sicily on the first patrol. In June he bombarded a wireless station on the Aeolian archipelago — remarking the supportive enthusiasm of the inhabitants through his periscope — then sank a large tanker and survived a vigorous counterattack by two destroyers.

He was awarded his second DSC for these early patrols and a mention in despatches for Ultor’s creditable role as a beach marker during Operation Shingle, the amphibious assault at Anzio in May 1944. Ultor was constantly on the prowl and constantly adding to her list of hits, often under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances.

On one occasion off the south coast of France, Ultor sank a large tanker which was escorted by no less than nine surface vessels and five aircraft, obtaining hits with both torpedoes fired. Retiring, as Hunt said , “on tiptoe”, Ultor was nevertheless pursued and counterattacked with more than 100 depth charges. It is under such circumstances, with only the skipper able to obtain brief glimpses of what is going on above through the periscope, that the courage and tenacity of the rest of the crew undergoes the severest test, being dependent upon their faith in the young officer in command.

Hunt was awarded the DSO for eight war patrols to February 1944, and a bar in December. After a total of some 32 war patrols, seventeen in Ultor, Hunt, with two DSOs and two DSCs was still a lieutenant aged 28.

At his investiture at Buckingham Palace, the King was pleased to receive the 13 Ultors receiving decorations “all together as a team”.

Receiving accelerated promotion to lieutenant-commander, Hunt finished the war at the Staff College and was then appointed to the aircraft carrier Triumph. Returning to submarines, he commanded the Ambush before being appointed as “Teacher” — the much feared Commanding Officer of the commanding officers qualifying course, known universally as the “perisher”. He always maintained that this was his most enjoyable tour; for two and a half years he was responsible for training and qualifying the new generation, his failure rate being 15 per cent. During the “free for all” phase of training, destroyers were allowed deliberately to turn at speed towards the periscope if sighted. “Just as exciting as the more nail-biting moments in wartime,” he would say.

His subsequent appointments included staff and operational tours with and outside the submarine service until his promotion to captain in 1953 at the very early age of 37.

As a commodore he commanded the frigate Bigbury Bay and the 7th Frigate Squadron as the Senior Naval Officer, West Indies. Although this was a seagoing post, the high diplomatic content allowed him to have his family with him at Bermuda. Subsequently, he was Chief of Staff to the Flag Officer Submarines and retired “with great regret” in 1963.

Emigrating to Australia, the Hunts settled in Queensland and George joined Evans Deakin and Co, Engineers and Shipbuilders. However, in 1966 the British High Commission offered him the post of Senior Commercial Officer for Queensland which he accepted and ran the commission’s commercial office for ten years. He and his wife both became Australian citizens, and George was elected president of the Queensland United Services Institute.

He was universally liked and admired for his modesty and good humour. His wife Phoebe, who was a Chief Wren in the Second World War and whom he married in 1941, died just before Christmas in 2005. He is survived by their daughter.

Captain George Hunt, DSO and Bar, DSC and Bar, submarine commander, was born on July 4, 1916. He died on August 16, 2011, aged 95


'Á³é â³äëóíàâ. Æîâòî-ñèí³ çíàìåíà çàòð³ïîò³ëè íà ñòàíö³¿ çíîâ'
Îò Bober
Ê Chestnut (22.08.2011 16:27:28)
Äàòà 23.08.2011 03:34:45

Re: [2Chestnut] Âîåííûå...

Çäðàâñòâóéòå!
Ñïàñèáî áîëüøîå çà Âàøó ðàáîòó!
Âû íå ïðîòèâ- ÿ ïîòèõîíüêó òàñêàþ òîïè÷íîå ñþäà http://tsushima.su/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=417244#p417244
Ñ óâàæåíèåì!
Îò Chestnut
Ê Bober (23.08.2011 03:34:45)
Äàòà 23.08.2011 12:42:02

êîíå÷íî æå íå ïðîòèâ ))) (-)
Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (22.08.2011 16:27:28)
Äàòà 22.08.2011 16:31:33

Âîåííûå íåêðîëîãè èç áðèòàíñêèõ ãàçåò

>Sir John Rawlins
> Navy doctor who pioneered new safety measures and tested them on himself

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8709908/Sir-John-Rawlins.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3115406.ece

Inventive naval surgeon who devised an underwater escape system from aircraft and a widely used protective flying helmet

John Rawlins was internationally recognised as one of the pioneers in aviation medicine, diving research and operations.

He was born at Amesbury, Wiltshire, when his father was commandant of the nearby chemical research establishment at Porton Down. From an early age he had no doubts that he would be a surgeon and in 1939 he was accepted as a medical student at University College, Oxford, graduating as a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1945.

While working at the London Chest Hospital, he became liable for National Service and was assigned to the navy in May 1947. According to Rawlins, it was after a particularly riotous mess dinner that he inadvertently volunteered for a course in aviation medicine, a field new to him and one which, linked to his diving, was to become a life-long enthusiasm.

Appointed to the carrier Triumph in the Mediterranean, he never missed an opportunity to gain first hand experience of carrier-borne flying operations and their considerable hazards.

He took up spear-fishing while in Malta and, adapting the equipment designed by Jimmy Hodges, an ex-midget submarine colleague, he built his own compressed-air diving equipment. This incorporated a hydrostatically controlled “demand valve”, the design of which was copied into the navy’s first swimmers’ air breathing apparatus some five years later.

After his release from National Service Rawlins returned to the London Chest Hospital but a quirk of the newly instituted NHS found him at the end of a queue of 70 applicants for his previous job. After two years as a supernumary, teaching anatomy at Bart’s and the Charing Cross Hospital, the Royal Navy “made him an offer he couldn’t refuse” and appointed him with a permanent commission to the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM) in 1951.

Combat by fast jet aircraft during the Korean War produced a need for an automatically inflating “G-Suit” to prevent aircrew blacking out due to a loss of blood supply to the brain during high-G manoeuvres. Rawlins’s first task was to develop a suit to military standards and his final design achieved a pattern that was to be used unmodified by RN, RAF and civilian test pilots for six years.

A naval pilot was nearly scalped by the upper cable of a crash-barrier on a carrier flight-deck off Korea, this accident prompting the development of a crash helmet of sufficient strength and lightness yet having high acoustic insulation as well as provision for radio communications. Rawlins undertook some original research into the mechanics of skull and brain injury, shock absorption and the design of headphones. He learned how to machine rubber on a lathe by first deep-freezing it.

The outcome was the first protective flying helmet to be based on the mechanics of skull injury, both services ordering it in large numbers. He subsequently joined the British Standards Institute and contributed to internationally agreed standards for motor-cycle, racing driver and horse-riding helmets.

The arrival of intensely noisy jet engines prompted Rawlins to conduct the first acoustic survey of carrier flight deck noise and subsequently to design a noise-attenuating flight deck helmet. During this survey, a sailor walked into a whirling propellor despite broadcast warnings; this accident led Rawlins to develop a flight deck magnetic loop communications system.

In 1955 a Scimitar aircraft suffered brake failure and taxied over the side of Ark Royal’s flight deck, an accident made more tragic by the all-too-public press photographs of the pilot trying to escape from under a jammed cockpit canopy. Rawlins worked on the recovered aircraft to determine the cause and conducted a long series of experiments with various British, French and American aircraft to produce an underwater escape system that, using compressed air, would blow off the cockpit canopy and inflate the life-jacket. This particular solution was never used. For his achievements, Rawlins was appointed MBE in 1956 and OBE in 1960.

In 1958 he was attached to the Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory to work on diving research, including preliminary studies into the long term effects of saturation diving using rats and various gas mixtures. He returned to the IAM and worked there until 1964 when he was selected as the navy’s Man of the Year and awarded the Erroll-Eldridge Prize for his notable contributions to flight safety and health.

Promoted to surgeon commander, he was appointed to the carrier Ark Royal for three years as the medical and diving supervisory officer, also captaining the ship’s judo team. This was followed by three years exchange service with the US Navy’s medical research institute at Bethesda, Maryland, where he worked on thermal protection for deep diving with particular attention to the Sealab III programme.

On return to England he received a series of senior appointments including Director of Health and Research in the rank of commodore and in 1975 Dean of Naval Medicine and officer-in-charge of the Institute of Naval Medicine as a surgeon rear-admiral, receiving the Chadwick Gold Medal and Prize for services to naval health as well as the Gilbert Blane Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Telford Award of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1973 the Aerospace Medical Association recognised his contributions with the Arnold D Tuttle Award.

In 1977 he was appointed Medical Director General of the Navy, retiring in 1980 in the rank of surgeon vice-admiral. He was appointed KBE in 1978.

After his naval career, Rawlins worked mainly in the field of underwater technology. Besides his numerous fellowships, he was a director and chairman of a number of companies, including Deep Ocean Technology Inc, Trident Underwater Engineering (Systems) and Medical Express. His diving expertise was recognised by the award in 1995 of the Reg Vallintine Award of the Historical Diving Society of which he was President and the Colin McLeod award of the British Sub-Aqua Club with its honorary life membership. He was much in demand as a lecturer and presented technical papers to various groups in the UK, France, Sweden, Japan and the USA.

His wife Diana, whom he married in 1944, died in 1992. He is survived by their son and three daughters.

Surgeon Vice-Admiral Sir John Rawlins, KBE, Medical Director-General of the Navy, 1977-80, was born on May 12, 1922. He died on July 27, 2011, aged 89


>Ctirad Masin
> Czech anti-communist 'resistant’ who shot his way out of a vast Soviet dragnet to freedom

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8705202/Ctirad-Masin.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3140754.ece

Anti-communist Czech who completed a daring escape to West Berlin by clinging to the bottom of a train

It was one of the great dramas of the early Cold War. In 1953 Ctirad Masin, a young Czech and fierce opponent of his country’s new communist rulers, was attempting with his brother Josef and three other associates to reach the American-occupied zone of Berlin. From there they hoped to gain military training in the West “and come back either as part of a liberating army ... or as its advance guard”.

But they were spotted during their journey across East Germany, and then pursued for days by thousands of police and security officials. They moved at night and narrowly escaped discovery, hidden under piles of wood. At a railway station, apparently surrounded, they shot their way out of trouble. While two of their number were captured, Ctirad, his brother and one other reached West Berlin, Ctirad making the final journey clinging to the underside of a train.

He was finally able to realise his dream and enlist in United States forces, but the hope for a US-led invasion of Czechoslovakia was left unfulfilled. Instead Masin had to settle for US citizenship and life as a businessman, cursing the effects of communism to the end of his life. Even after the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989 he refused to return to his birthplace, claiming that communists still had too much influence in his native land, and that legal continuities with the communist era might leave him open to prosecution.

For Masin knew too that while some Czechs, including prominent politicians, regarded him and his group as heroic freedom fighters, others remained much more critical, because of the six individuals the group had killed during the preparation and implementation of their escape plan. Masin justified his actions by arguing that “the situation was unbearable” in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that the communist government had killed hundreds, and that all his groups’s victims in both Czechoslovakia and East Germany had been servants of communist regimes and therefore legitimate targets.

However, around half of those consulted in a Czech television opinion poll a few years ago considered the Masin group to have been “criminals”. Their extraordinary story exposed deep divisions in Czech opinion about what kind of resistance to communism was justified, and how far it could be seen as a nationally imperative “third resistance” following Czech resistance, by some at least, against Habsburg and then Nazi rule.

Ctirad Masin would certainly have seen exactly that kind of continuity, growing up in a family with a proud military and resistance tradition. He was born in the town of Podebrady, about 30 miles from Prague, in 1930 and was strongly influenced by his father, who had fought with the Czech legions in Russia during and after the First World War and was an officer in an artillery regiment of the Czechoslovak Army.

Although that army was not able to resist Nazi invasion of the Czech lands in 1939, Masin’s father became a leading figure in the underground Czech resistance until his capture and torture by the Gestapo. He was executed in 1942 as part of Nazi reprisals for the assassination of the Nazi Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich.

But the father had left a testament urging his sons to recall with courage that all politically and nationally engaged Czechs should defend the freedom of their country and people. “You too have to act accordingly,” he had added. The sons had already shown their commitment as teenagers during the war, helping Russians to escape Nazi imprisonment and earning a decoration from the new postwar President of Czechoslovakia Eduard Benes. When Benes was displaced after a communist coup in 1948 the Masin brothers became diehard opponents of the new regime and its Soviet backers. In Ctirad’s case opposition was reinforced when he was imprisoned by the authorities for nearly two years as a forced labourer at the notorious uranium mines around Jachymov.

The Masin brothers and a few close friends formed an anti-communist resistance group, beginning with minor acts of sabotage such as burning fields and defacing statues of Stalin, before moving on to bigger plans. “We wanted to overthrow the communist regime,” Ctirad recalled. “Obviously we could not make it with our limited resources, but we ... wanted to cause the biggest losses possible in the expectation of an intervention from the West.”

The group began to acquire weapons and steal cash over many months, during which they killed two policemen and a security guard, Ctirad Masin cutting the throat of one policeman after knocking him out with chloroform.

Then in 1953 they felt ready to attempt their audacious escape to West Berlin. Three East German policemen were killed as the Masins and a dwindling number of colleagues resisted arrest. The communist authorities raged, with East German officials summoning the Western press to claim that the Czechs had intended to carry out the “mass murder of the people’s police”. The Czechoslovak Government, meanwhile, took harsh action against the associates and families of those who had escaped. The Masins were prosecuted in their absence for sabotage, murder, embezzlement, defection, espionage and treason.

After serving in the US forces for some years, Ctirad settled as an American citizen in Cleveland, Ohio and ran businesses including one supplying heating equipment. But although the Masins were living well beyond the reach of Czechoslovak law, the prosecutions, especially the allegations of murder, continued to hang over them. After 1989 and the revolution against Czechoslovak communist rule one of the Masin group living in the US, Milan Paumer, returned to live in what became the Czech Republic. He was fêted by some, and the Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas attended his funeral last year, praising his resistance as “heroic”. The Masin brothers had also been honoured by an earlier Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek.

However, the Czech Presidents Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus were wary of granting the Masin group full rehabilitation and honours from the Czech state. On the Czech political Left, especially among the unreformed Communist Party, there was vocal opposition towards any honouring of the Masins, and even demands that they be extradited and prosecuted for murder. For their part, the Masins said they would not return to the Czech Republic because communist influence there remained strong, including in the legal system partly inherited from communist rule. “If democratic laws were in place,” Ctirad argued in 1995, “there would be no discussion of this kind. It would be the communists standing trial for murdering people.”

While the moral justification of what the Masins did in the 1950s is still disputed, the drama of intrepid individuals against the massed forces of totalitarian states is undeniable. Ctirad Masin’s anti-communist resistance will remain controversial after his death, as it was during his life, at the centre of a profound Czech debate about the rights and wrongs of resistance.

Ctirad Masin, Czech anti-Communist, was born on August 11, 1930. He died on August 13, 2011, aged 81


>Nancy Wake
>Highly decorated SOE agent who ran escape lines to Spain and a large Maquis force before D-Day

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/8689765/Nancy-Wake.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3118724.ece

SOE courier who was awarded the George Medal for gallantry while serving with the French Resistance

Nancy Fiocca, to use her married name at the time, was parachuted into German-occupied France with another Special Operations Executive agent, Major John Farmer, on the night of April 29-30, 1944. Her companion landed in the right place but Nancy, code-named Hélène, landed 300 yards away. She was found by a Maquisard search party, automatic in hand ready to fire. Her sense of purpose, not to say aggression, had been frequently noted during her intensive SOE training.

The pair’s task was to contact the leaders of a large group of the French Resistance in the Allier and Haute-Loire regions, arm them and try to give them operational direction in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Normandy five weeks later. The SOE did not encourage the formation of large groups of partisans, as they were vulnerable to German attack, but in this instance it was considered that the group could be useful in sabotaging German reinforcement routes from southern France to the Normandy bridgehead.

Taken to a safe house in Cosne d’Allier, Farmer established contact with Resistance organisers the next day, but their radio operator and his equipment, due to be flown in separately by a Lysander, failed to arrive, making it impossible for them to call SOE headquarters in Algiers to begin the delivery of arms. This and suspicions between Maquisard factions led to them being passed from one to another until May 15 when they were finally joined by their radio operator. They chose Chaudes-Aigues, the centre for a group of some 4,000 Maquis, as a base and large-scale deliveries of weapons soon began.

On June 20, two weeks after Allied troops had landed on the Normandy beaches, the Maquis concentration area was attacked by several German battalions supported by aircraft. The attack started at 7am and continued until after nightfall. When the order “sauve-qui-peut”, calling for panic dispersal, was given, Farmer and Wake became separated from their radio operator but joined a substantial group of Maquis in a deserted village. The pair split up, Wake set off to try to contact a radio operator of another SOE team and Farmer to try to find their own. Each having walked more than 200km they met by arrangement in early July near Aurillac, from where they tried to re-establish radio contact with SOE headquarters.

No reply was received, and the Maquisards having dispersed, the two again decided to move separately with one Maquis companion to try to reestablish contact with Resistance groups in the Allier and Chateauxroux regions respectively. Wake cycled to Chateauxroux then to a prearranged rendezvous with Farmer at Montluçon, covering the 400km journey in less than a week without finding any sign of the Resistance. Asked at the rendezvous, “How are you?” she could neither stand nor sit but simply wept with exhaustion. As Farmer had been equally unsuccessful in the Allier, the pair decided to make their way to Spain when a message was received telling them to collect a new radio operator due to be flown in 250km away.

Narrowly avoiding a pitched battle between Germans and Maquisards on their return journey by car, Farmer decided to tour the region to establish parachute dropzones or aircraft landing grounds for each Resistance group, then co-ordinate weapon supplies from a new base in the forest of Sivret, north of Ygrande. Wake was in charge of this base with two newly arrived US SOE agents when it was attacked by three companies of German infantry on August 7, 1944. Taking command of a Maquisard section whose leader had been killed, Wake seized the initiative, firing her own automatic pistol at the enemy and directing the section’s fire and that of the two US officers, who had each grabbed a bazooka. Gathering the group around her, she directed covering fire for them to withdrew without further casualties.

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake was born in Wellington, New Zealand, daughter of Charles Wake, a lawyer, and Ella Rosier of Sydney. She was educated in Sydney until aged 18 and left for Paris in 1936. There she met a Frenchman, Henri Fiocca, and married him in November 1939. They were living in Marseilles when France fell and, unknown to her husband, Nancy became a courier for an underground organisation conveying Allied pilots to safety.

Although Vichy France was not occupied by Germany until November 1942, life there could be dangerous for anyone suspected of clandestine activity. Wake’s outgoing personality led her to take risks and, while preparing to courier a message across the border into occupied France, she heard that the German authorities already knew her by reputation but not by name. They called her “the White Mouse” for her habit of scurrying about.

Her journey to Paris was successful but, on learning that their organisation’s leader and prominent members had been apprehended, she and a woman colleague fled to Spain. They were arrested and sent to Madrid but by invoking her dual British-French nationality she was able to persuade the Spanish authorities to deport them both to Gibraltar, from where they sailed for England. On arrival she enlisted in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), then recruiting women of French nationality and French-speakers for service in France with SOE.

The operation with Farmer in 1944 was her first. That November, after the incident in the Forest of Sivret and Paris having fallen to the Allies, Farmer sent her to the French capital for temporary duty with an SOE network whose headquarters had moved there.Probably owing to the stress of the preceding summer, she fell ill in Paris and did not report back after sick leave. She subsequently wrote to SOE headquarters in London requesting to be “sworn out” of the organisation in Paris.

She was awarded the George Medal by Britain for her gallantry during the Forest of Sivret incident in August, 1944; and the US Medal of Freedom and French Croix de Guerre with two palms for her SOE services in France. Her services to France were further recognised by her appointment as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour when in her eighties.

Discovering that her husband had been killed by the Nazis, she returned to Australia. In 1957 she married John Forward, an Englishman who had served with the RAF and been a PoW. In December 2001 she left for England amid some publicity, during which she claimed that the Australian Government and veterans organisations were denying her the recognition that she deserved. She was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2004.

Her second husband predeceased her. She had no children.

Nancy Wake, AC, GM, wartime SOE agent in German-occupied France, was born on August 30, 1912. She died on August 7, 2011, aged 98


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Ê Chestnut (22.08.2011 16:31:33)
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Brigadier David Stileman

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3119874.ece

Rifle Brigade officer who took part in Operation Goodwood — where he learnt important lessons from a shrewd German adversary

David Stileman would ruefully explain to Staff College students attending the Normandy battlefield tour that he had survived the Second World War because of shrewdly withheld enemy fire. It was the morning of Operation Goodwood on June 18, 1944, that the commanding officer of 8th Battalion The Rifle Brigade ordered him to take his motor platoon — mounted in lightly armoured half-tracks — to check whether there were any enemy in the hamlet of Hubert-Folie.

The approaches were wide open, giving any German anti-tank guns concealed there a turkey-shoot opportunity into the flank of 11th Armoured Brigade as it advanced southwards. The place had to be cleared and it was the infantry’s job to clear it. Stileman led his half-tracks hell for leather down the little main street without a shot being fired. Assuming the hamlet cleared, 8th Rifle Brigade pressed on but the enemy were there, and in other hamlets and patches of cover to the flank of three British armoured divisions advancing side by side.

The German 88mm guns, including those of an anti-aircraft battery that the local commander, Colonel Hans von Luck, ordered to lower its gun muzzles to engage the British armour, opened fire. More than 300 British tanks were lost or severely damaged that day. Montgomery did not intend Goodwood to be an attempt to break out from the east of the Normandy bridgehead but — in accordance with his strategic plan — to draw the enemy armour there to give the 1st (US) Army a clear run to break out on the west. It had that effect, even though it proved a costly enterprise.

Although Stileman survived that day, two weeks later he was shot in the head by a sniper, the bullet exiting through his neck. After eight operations he returned to duty before the end of the northwest Europe campaign. For many years after the war he and Colonel Hans-Ulrich von Luck und Witten, to give him his full styling, appeared on the Goodwood battlefield explaining how to defeat massed armour in open ground dotted with hamlets and farmsteads; by then a prospect faced by Nato forces confronting the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact on the north German plain.

David Madryll Stileman was the son of Commander Arthur Stileman, RN. At Wellington he excelled at rugby and while an instructor at RMA Sandhurst in 1947-48 played for Harlequins and Berkshire and had a trial for England. His preoccupation with the game was surpassed only by his Christian faith; he played his last rugby match aged 51 and hosted Bible study in his House of Lords flat when he was Yeoman Usher to Black Rod after leaving the Army.

His regimental service included the Mau Mau campaign in Kenya with 1st Battalion The Rifle Brigade and then in Malaya during the communist insurrection. Seeking variety, he undertook a secondment as a company commander with the Somaliland Scouts in the late 1950s as the territory approached independence. There was intense competition for service with the Scouts among the local youths; Stileman would kick a rugby ball into the crowd of applicants and grant places to those who emerged — battered, bruised and sometimes bitten — with it.

On promotion to lieutenant-colonel, he commanded the Royal Green Jackets depot and training centre in Winchester, for which service he was appointed OBE. He was later the defence adviser to the British High Commissioner in Lagos, a sensitive post in which two of his predecessors had incurred the displeasure of the Nigerian Government of the day.

He retired from the Army in 1979, having completed his service as the deputy commander of Eastern District, based in Nottingham, 1976-79. Immediately after leaving, he took up the post of assistant to Black Rod as Yeoman Usher in the House of Lords.

These duties did not deflect him from joining Colonel von Luck at the British Staff College annual battlefield tours in Normandy. As is often the case with dangerous but exciting incidents, the story of his platoon’s dash through the hamlet of Hubert-Folie might have obscured the more significant and relevant lessons of skilfully sited defence against massed armour — but for von Luck’s detailed and engaging explanation of the latter.

The two former enemies became close friends and appeared together at military seminars until von Luck’s death in 1997.

In retirement Stileman returned to the house in Wimbledon where he was born. He became a sought-after lay preacher, as well as keeping up his military and sporting connections.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and three sons, one of whom followed him into service with the Royal Green Jackets. His daughter predeceased him.

Brigadier David Stileman, OBE, infantryman, was born on April 9, 1924. He died on June 24, 2011, aged 87

Squadron Leader John Canning

Wartime RAF bomber navigator who was later involved in missions to drop food supplies to the Dutch and to repatriate PoWs

After two tours as a navigator with 115 Squadron in 3 Group in 1943 and 1944, John Canning joined 7 Squadron in 8 Group — the Pathfinder Force (PFF) — with which he served until the end of the war in Europe. During the last few weeks of the conflict he was involved in two mercy missions, Operation Manna, which dropped food to the starving population of the Netherlands, and later Operation Exodus, which repatriated thousands of prisoners of war from Europe. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945.

Born in Dublin in 1920, he was educated at O’Connell Irish Christian Brothers School (one of whose alumni was the fighter ace Paddy Finucane). Canning wanted to join the RAF at the outbreak of war in 1939, but his parents would not let him. Instead he served articles in a firm of solicitors until the age of majority (then 21) when he was able to choose for himself.

After training as a navigator in Canada, in January 1943 he joined 115 Squadron, then still flying the twin-engined Wellington from its base at East Wretham in Norfolk, but in March to be equipped with the Lancaster. Canning had already taken part in service trials of Gee, the first-generation medium-range navigation and bombing aid, with which No 115 was equipped. Between January and July he took part in raids on naval bases on the French coast, St Nazaire and La Rochelle, as well as dropping mines in Dutch waters. Later in his tour he was involved in bombing raids on the cities of German’s Ruhr industrial heartland, Duisburg, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen, as well as sorties against Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Rested from operations in July 1943, he went to an operational training unit where he trained on the new bombing aid, H2S, which provided airborne radar and ground mapping for each aircraft. This gave a new dimension to the accuracy of bombing at ranges outside the effectiveness of Gee and Oboe. When Canning returned to operations with 115 Squadron at Witchford, Cambridgeshire, its Lancasters were now equipped with H2S, which Canning operated in raids on Bremen and Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland).

On August 31, 1944, he was navigator of a Lancaster in a force of 601 aircraft — 418 Lancasters, 147 Halifaxes and 36 Mosquitoes — that bombed nine sites in Northern France where the Germans were believed to be storing V2 rockets. Eight of the sites were identified and wrecked, for the loss of only six Lancasters.

In October 1944 Canning volunteered for the PFF and was posted to 7 Squadron in 8 Group. From December 1944 almost until the end of the war he served as a marker in raids on Leipzig, Nuremberg, Hanover and Munich, among many other targets, and navigated the master bomber’s aircraft in raids on Essen, Hanover and Hamburg. He also took part in what became the controversial raid on Dresden carried out by the RAF on the night of February 13-14, 1945, and supplemented by USAAF daylight raids, which caused large casualties among civilians and refugees from the Eastern Front who had crowded into the city. The final death toll will never be known with any certainty.

In the last fortnight of the war Canning participated in two operations of a very different character. Operation Manna, paralleled by the USAAF Operation Chowhound, was set up with the acquiescence of occupying German forces, to drop food to the Dutch population in the still unliberated areas of the western Netherlands, which was in danger of starving. From April 29, 1945, until the end of the war more than 11,000 tons of food were dropped. A second mission in which he was pleased to participate was Operation Exodus, which repatriated more than 70,000 prisoners of war from Europe from early May onwards.

Canning remained in the RAF after the war, continuing flying into the jet age, until 1959. He retired as a squadron leader in 1970 and went back to the law, becoming a partner in a firm of solicitors in Essex.

He married his wife, Joy, a WAAF, in 1946. He is survived by her and by three children.

Squadron Leader John Canning, DFC, wartime bomber navigator, was born on January 28, 1920. He died on June 6, 2011, aged 91

Flying Officer Geoffrey Fisken

Wartime New Zealand fighter ace who brought down seven Japanese aircraft in four weeks during the forlorn defence of Singapore

The top-scoring Commonwealth fighter pilot in the air battles against the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, Geoffrey Fisken was involved in the desperate and ultimately futile defence of Singapore as the Japanese tide swept forward, engulfing British and Allied possessions in Asia in early 1942.

Remarkably, given that RAF and Commonwealth squadrons were not only outnumbered, but hampered by their inferior aircraft, equipment and maintenance facilities, he scored seven combat victories during this dire period, making him an ace (five kills) in the space of four weeks.

Lucky enough to be evacuated from the scene and able to return to New Zealand where he served for a period on home defence duties, he returned to the front line in the campaign in the Solomons in April 1943 and had further combat victories . He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in September that year, by which time he had been credited with 11 combat victories.

Geoffrey Bryson Fisken was born in 1916 in Gisborne, in the North Island of New Zealand. His father owned a sheep station and he followed in his footsteps at the same time learning to fly, taking lessons in a Gypsy Moth during the 1930s.

In September 1939 he volunteered for the Royal New Zealand Air Force. But sheep farming was considered a reserved occupation, and it was not until the following year that his employer released him and he was allowed to enlist.

After training at New Plymouth and Ohakea he graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1941 and was posted that February to Singapore to join 205 Squadron RAF, a flying boat unit. He was soon on a conversion course to fighters, flying the Australian-built Wirraway and the American-built Brewster Buffalo. He was posted to 67 Squadron, but this was dispatched to Burma in October 1941 and Fisken joined 243 Squadron at RAF Kallang in Malaya, flying the Buffalos. This was a fighter that had seen service with the Finns against the Soviet Air Force during the “Winter War” of 1939-40, but was not much liked by its British and Commonwealth pilots, largely because the aircraft that had arrived in Singapore had badly conditioned engines, barely serviceable guns and a malfunctioning oxygen system.

As the Japanese invaded Malaya Fisken’s was one of two Buffaloes that on December 10 arrived over the battleship Prince of Wales just as she was disappearing under the waves, having been sunk by Japanese aircraft along with the battlecruiser Repulse after bombing and torpedo attacks that had lasted almost two hours. As the Japanese advanced down the Malay peninsula towards Singapore 243 Squadron was in the forefront of the air defence of the city. From then on the air fighting was intense and attritional.

Fisken shot down a Japanese Army 97 bomber on January 12, a Japanese Navy Zero fighter on the 14th, two more 97s on the 17th plus a probable and one more damaged on that day and another Zero on the 21st. But 243’s own casualties were terrible. By the time he had his final combat victory on February 21, the squadron had virtually ceased to exist, having lost most of its aircraft and pilots in the face of overwhelming, well-serviced Japanese air power. In the moment of his own victory that day, Fisken was assailed by two more fighters and was wounded twice: in the arm by a machine gun round and in the hip by a cannon shell fragment.

He was evacuated from Singapore before the surrender of the island on February 15 and returned to New Zealand where, after recovering from his wounds he was commissioned and posted to 14 Squadron RNZAF flying Curtis P40 Kittyhawks. This was sent for a tour of operations in the Solomon Islands where, flying from Guadalcanal, he had four more combat victories — against Japanese fighters and a possible fifth against a Betty bomber, flying his personalised P40, NZ3072, the Wairarapa Wild Cat. He was awarded the DFC in September 1943.

Still suffering from the injuries he had sustained over Singapore which gave him increasing trouble as time went on, he was stood down from operations and in December that year invalided out of the RNZAF. He had a tally of 11 combat victories certified and a probable, which makes it likely that he had bagged a round dozen.

Fisken returned to farming in Rotorua, North Island, where he lived for the rest of his life, eventually selling his farm and working in management for the Egg Marketing Board.

NZ3072 was scrapped after the war, but NZ3009 was restored and painted to represent NZ3072 the famous Wild Cat. Fisken was reunited with this aircraft at an air show at Masterton in 2005.

He and his wife, Rhoda, who died in 1997, had a daughter and five sons.

Flying Officer Geoffrey Fisken, DFC, New Zealand fighter ace, was born on February 17, 1916. He died on June 12, 2011, aged 95

Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Joe’ Cêtre

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3137456.ece

Inspiring leader who earned the Military Cross during the withdrawal to Dunkirk and again during the fierce Ardennes fighting in 1945

Short in stature but a resolute fighting soldier, “Joe” Cêtre won his first Military Cross during the withdrawal to Dunkirk in 1940 and the second, four and a half years later, in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the German Ardennes offensive in January 1945. An enthusiast for the history of war, after completing his service as a professional soldier, he became a professor at the Portuguese Military Academy in Lisbon.

Fernand Octavo Cêtre was born in Clapham, South London, the only son of a French immigrant father from Burgundy and a German mother. The family were devoutly Catholic, resulting in the young Cêtre attending the long-established Catholic Clapham College before going to Sandhurst.

Commissioned in July 1937 he joined the East Lancashire Regiment, for which he had applied because of the high proportion of Roman Catholics among the officers and men. On joining the 1st Battalion in Palace Barracks, Belfast, the bushy moustache he had at the time earned him the nickname “Joe” after the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The name stuck for life.

His battalion joined the British Expeditionary Force in France in April 1940, three weeks before the German onslaught through the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France. Moved forward into Belgium with the 42nd Infantry Division to help to try to stem the enemy offensive, the 1st East Lancashires established their initial defensive position at Tournai, on the bank of the Escaut Canal, but were quickly outflanked and forced to withdraw.

Although he was seeing action for the first time, Cêtre’s leadership and initiative quickly became apparent. Twice he led forward fighting patrols to clear the enemy from threatening positions on the battalion’s flanks and, at one point where the enemy broke through, turned their attack away by the sheer dynamism of the local counter-attack he inspired and led. He was the acting second-in-command of his company when they reached Dunkirk; there he brought forward — under fire — ammunition essential for the battalion to plug a widening gap in the defensive perimeter. In the ensuing action his company commander, Major Marcus Ervine-Andrews, won the only VC of the campaign.

Cêtre received the MC for gallantry and outstanding leadership throughout the withdrawal. Twenty years later, while commanding the successor battalion, he unveiled the commemorative painting of the stand of 1st East Lancashires on the Dunkirk perimeter on June 1, 1940.

The years between the withdrawal of the BEF from the Continent and the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 involved intensive training: first to repel the expected German invasion that threatened until Hitler turned on Soviet Russia in June 1941, then in anticipation of D-Day. Cêtre served with the same battalion throughout and was commanding a company when it crossed to France with the 53rd (Welsh) Division on June 25, 1944.

The battalion was soon heavily involved in the fighting around Caen, then in the advance through dense bocage country towards the River Orne before staging a battalion attack on the fortified village of Bois Halbout. This was taken successfully but with significant losses.

Cêtre’s battalion had its toughest battle of the northwest Europe campaign at Grimbiémont in the Ardennes in January 1945. By then, the German offensive intended to divide the Allied armies and retake the port of Antwerp had been contained and defeated, after Eisenhower’s decision put all forces on the northern flank of the incursion, British and American, under Montgomery’s command. But German resistance remained determined and professionally highly competent.

The Grimbiémont attack required a 1,500-yard advance across open, snow-covered ground with Cêtre’s A Company on the right flank supported by a squadron of Sherman tanks. The snow prevented the tanks reaching the start line, so Cêtre pushed forward towards its first objective — supported only by indirect fire — reaching it with just one of his three platoons and his own tactical headquarters. Isolated, but holding ground key to the battalion’s success, he held on until the enemy had been driven from the forward edge of Grimbiémont. Having by then gathered up the survivors of his two missing platoons, he moved forward to secure the far end of the objective allowing the battalion to consolidate its hold and clear the rest of the village. He was awarded an immediate Bar to his MC.

Severely wounded by a shell that struck his company headquarters after the Rhine crossing in March 1945, Cêtre was evacuated to the regimental aid post. A young officer of the battalion who was informed that his brother had been injured in the same attack went to the aid post to find out about him. Discovering that his brother was not seriously injured, he asked the medical orderlies who the casualty on a stretcher covered with a blanket was. When they told him it was Major Cêtre and they were unsure whether he was still alive, the young officer lifted the blanket to reveal a pale sweating figure. He asked: “Joe, are you still with us?” The response from Cêtre was that not only was he still alive, but that he would back in the fight in the morning.

His wounds were too serious for that but on recovery in England he attended the Staff College. Subsequently he served in Palestine, Malaya and in various staff appointments until assuming command of his regiment, taking it through amalgamation with the South Lancashire Regiment to form the Lancashire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Volunteers) in 1958.

After an appointment with the Nato mission in Portugal he retired from the Army in 1967 initially to manage a holiday complex near Lisbon. He was later the general secretary of the British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, 1973-76, then Professor of English at the Portuguese officer training college, the Academia Militar, in Lisbon, 1976-86. He also became a recognised authority on Wellington’s Peninsular War defences — the Lines at Torres Vedras — and served for many years as honorary secretary of the Royal British Legion in Portugal.

His wife, Margaret, predeceased him. There were no children.

Lieutenant-Colonel F. O. “Joe” Cêtre, MC and Bar, was born on July 30, 1916. He died on July 1, 2011, aged 94


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