No . 137 The Trusty Servant
They paid our bill for warring . Straight into Fate ’ s gun-sights On eagles ’ wings they flew , Knowing and doing their duty ; Until the gods of life Took them to life anew In the hour of their beauty .
For the first part of the war , Britain ’ s main campaign was in North Africa . The conditions and the heat were a shock at first , but most soon found that ‘ Life in the desert is at any rate hard and healthy ’. The Italian armies facing them were beaten back to Cyrenaica . In February 1941 , Jim Richardson of the 2 nd RTR at Beda Fomm with a squadron of Cruiser tanks took on more than a hundred Italian M-13 tanks and captured 15,000 prisoners . He won a well-deserved DSO .
Wavell was then ordered by Churchill to send a large force to Greece and the newly arrived German Afrika Korps proved a far harder enemy . In the attempt to relieve Tobruk in November 1941 with Operation Crusader , the Eighth Army found itself under-gunned against panzer counter-attacks . Bernard Pinney ’ s battery of Royal Horse Artillery at Sidi Rezegh fought a suicidally brave defence , an action which prompted two recommendations for the Victoria Cross . Pinney ’ s bravery and leadership undoubtedly deserved the highest award , but in the lottery of medals he missed out , killed alone next day . The Bobber , back at Hopper ’ s , heard from Pinney ’ s mother that ‘ Bernard has earned the right to be one of your honoured dead ’.
The Germans were forced back and the 7 th Armoured Division recalled to Egypt to be re-equipped . Their replacement was the untried 1 st Armoured Division . HQ Middle East under-estimated the speed of German recovery . In January 1942 , Rommel launched his drive eastwards . Commonwealth forces were caught on the back foot .
The Far East was the forgotten theatre of war . Two Hopperites , Gerry Rickman and Sam Clayton , were desperately unlucky to be sent to Singapore . Having steeled themselves to the possibility of being killed or wounded , they instead found themselves forced to surrender in the British Empire ’ s greatest humiliation . Southeast Asia was a daunting destination . When Roger Rigby received his orders to proceed to India to train up an Indian armoured corps he immediately made plans to visit the Bobber in Hopper ’ s . He wrote to thank him afterwards .
I don ’ t think I have ever appreciated Winchester so much before . I suppose this was partly because I knew I wouldn ’ t see it again for a long , long time . The cricket in the sun , somebody casting a line , Chapel clock striking , fencing in Meads , and all the old faces , make up a picture I shall not forget .
Of the seventeen Wykehamists captured by the Japanese , two were murdered by their guards . Gerry Rickman suffered the horrors of slave labour on the ‘ Death Railway ’. Clephan Bell , another Hopperite , was tortured in Batavia by the Japanese in an attempt to force him to broadcast propaganda . To avoid this , he committed suicide by slashing his wrists .
Back in North Africa , the headlong retreat towards Egypt continued . The headquarters of 7 th Armoured Division was surprised by a German panzer unit . Jim Richardson and Major General Messervy were captured . A quickthinking Richardson managed to cut off Messervy ’ s badges of rank . When a German officer observed that he was surely too old to be an ordinary soldier , Richardson pretended that the general was his batman . The two of them managed to escape back to Allied lines that night , but tragically Richardson was killed by a stray shell just over a month later .
The letters in which families try to cope with their loss are deeply moving . One
Jim Richardson ( I , 29-33 ) ( right ) with General Messervy after their successful escape
poem mentioned the ‘ tendrils of private grief ’. Altogether twelve Wykehamists , five in the Scots Guards alone , landed on the Anzio beachhead in January 1944 . Half of them were killed . No family was harder hit than the Weirs . They held a joint memorial service for Major John Weir of the Scots Guards , his brother the fighter pilot , and their father lost at sea .
Altogether , 285 Wykehamists were killed out of a total of the 2,455 who served between 1939 and 1945 . It is a truly sobering thought , especially at this moment , with all the predictions in the press of another World War . What would the young Wykehamists of today have to face ?
The Bobber
A short TS review , including details of how to purchase A Noble Company can be found under Wiccamica , P15 .
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