Sibley, K.G. Mne.

Personal Information

Mne. Gerry Sibley was Dispatch Rider in HQ Troop 47 RM Commando. Ken Sibley was born in 1923 and was the youngest of 7 boys and 3 girls. The entire family lived in a 2-up and 2-down in Teddington; then a small town but now a suburb of London. Life would not have been easy for the family with very little money and so many children to clothe and feed in this small home. All the children had to learn from an early age to help with putting food on the table. They would forage for berries and fruits and go fishing or hunting for rabbits and ducks in Bushy Park. If they didn’t have success, they would go hungry. They were hard times, but the Sibley family would have no more nor less than their neighbours.

Being the youngest Ken was not expected to go to school but to stay at home to care for his ailing father and run errands. He taught himself to read through comics; the Dandy and Beano as well as Knowledge magazine, a subscription encyclopaedia.

Ken was, however, a star pupil in the School of Life. He discovered how to be resourceful and self-reliant; he learned how to make and mend; to care for others and to earn his way independently in life. As a boy he would pick flowers locally, then walk the many miles into London to sell them before bringing his hard-earned income home to his mum.

In 1939, and at the outbreak of WWII, he and a friend were given an antique rifle with 4 bullets and sent to protect Kingston Railway Station from the ‘invading hun’. Shortly afterwards he presented himself at the recruiting office and was designated sufficiently fit to become a Royal Marine Commando and dispatched to Achnacarry in Scotland for training. Ken’s birth certificate actually records Gerald as his first name and so to other marines he was known as Geri.

In 47 RM Commando, Ken was assigned to HQ-Troop as a dispatch rider and he saw service in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

He felt a strong connection to the people of the Netherlands; his unit having been billeted there with local families during the war. He saw how the local people struggled to survive; how thin and hungry the children were and was determined to do what he could to help. And so, he would ‘liberate’ food from the allied stores to give to the families they boarded with. It was his Robin Hood moment.

After the war Ken served as a Military Police Officer and then once demobbed, always resourceful, Ken used his good ear for music to make a living playing the piano and accordion around the local pubs, sometimes making as much as £5 a night, a fortune back then. It was while he was in one of those pubs, that he met a certain June Lillian Barber. This was probably around 1946 when Ken was 22 and June was 16. They started going steady, love blossomed and the rest as they say is history! They waited till June was 21 before they married. To afford their simple wedding Ken sold his accordion and so married life started - and his music career came to an end. They started their married life in 1952 in a flat in Teddington and Ken now earned his living as a lorry driver. They didn’t have much materially, but they were young, they were happy, and they were in love.