Hughes, T.L. Capt.

Personal Information

Captain Trevor Hughes MBE was a Lieutenant in the Normandy campaign, attached to HQ-Troop as Signals Officer. Trevor Lancaster Hughes was born in West Derby, Liverpool on October 27, 1922 and was educated at Alsop High School. In the early war years he worked in insurance and was a firewatcher during the Liverpool blitz. He volunteered for the RAF but failed a test in a spinning chair, when he could not stand straight after being whirled round. Instead he joined the Royal Marines and was commissioned in spring 1942.

Trevor Hughes was signals officer of 47 RM Commando. Hughes, and his signaller, Marine J S Winrow, joined the headquarters company at, 'Point 72', where Hughes worked frantically to establish communications with brigade HQ and the FOO.

While A, B and X-Troops were fighting in Port-en-Bessin, Hughes reported that the eight men at 'Point 72' were coming under fire from further south, but was told by his commanding officer that no one could be spared to deal with it. He and Winrow were lying side by side shooting at the attackers when Hughes's helmet was shot off. It hit Winrow in the face, who passed it back, and they carried on firing until Hughes was hit on the helmet again.

During the evening the HQ came under increasingly accurate sniper, machine-gun and mortar fire from several directions. By midnight the enemy had overrun the HQ, but Hughes and the gallant resistance of the platoon had prevented the Germans from interfering with the capture by 47 RM Commando of Port en Bessin.

Later in June he received shrapnel wounds to his right arm and shoulder when 47 RM Commando attacked at Sallenelles and he received a gunshot wound to his left hand at the landings on Walcheren in November. He was awarded the MBE in 1945.

Postwar Hughes joined an insurance company before setting up an office supplies company, Fonadek, which received a Royal Warrant after selling electrical equipment to the Duke of Edinburgh.

Awards

Member of the British Empire