HQ-Troop

HQ & X Troop

Wounded 7 June 1944.

Missing 7 June 1944.

HQ Troop (Signals) att. Q Troop

HQ-Troop (Signals). Arthur Baptist served with both 41 and 47 RM Commando up to July 1946. He as a signaller had a side arm rather than a rifle. Earlier, he trained with 418 Squad at Lympstone in September 1942. He possibly remained in some arm of the services as he travelled a lot between Holland and Germany until 1950.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

C/Sgt. Fred Batt took part in the Normandy landings, but was taken prisoner in the afternoon of 7 June 1944 from his rear guard position near Port-en-Bessin. He was taken into Germany to 'Marlag und Milag Nord' POW camp, where he stayed until 10 April 1945. He was moved to a camp at Bad Schwartau, where he was liberated by 2nd Army on 2 May 1945.

Missing 7 June 1944.

Norman Brangwin volunteered at the age of 19 and subsequently spent much of his war on HMS Bewick on the freezing Russian convoys. His service with 47 RM Commando included both France and Holland and he was on the brink of being posted to Japan before the situation changed.

Wounded 7 June 1944. In June 1944 Roy Bryant was wounded and captured at Hill 72 on the outskirts of Port-en-Bessin. When the German military hospital at Chateau Balleroi was evacuated he and an American paratrooper managed to escape into adjacent woodland and eventually reached the American lines.

Missing 7 June 1944.

B & HQ Troop. Wounded 15 July 1944.

Wounded 1 November 1944.

Don Clark, better known to his comrades as Nobby, served in HQ Troop. Like many, he added a year to his age in order to volunteer. After the rigorous commando training, he landed with 47 RM Commando in Normandy and remained throughout the Normandy campaign. Later Nobby landed on Walcheren where he was wounded. After convalescence, he was on board ship bound for Japan when news of their surrender came through. The ship continued and brought back prisoners of war. Don returned to Stratford after demob and worked for the Government, retiring as a Building Inspector. He received a medal for long service from the Queen and also, more recently, the Legion d’Honneur from France. War service coloured Don’s life and he always insisted that the true heroes were those brave men who never returned.

Missing 7 June 1944.

Intelligence Officer appointed 5 August 1943.

HQ Troop (Signals)

Wounded 6 June 1944.

Mne. Daulby was a Dispatch Rider and was wounded by shrapnell in his leg while riding his motorcycle sometime in Normandy.

HQ Troop (Signals)

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

(*Distinguished Service Order / Croix de Guerre)

Years before the war started Patrick Marshall Donnell already had an extensive military career having completed infantry, Naval gunnery, Seamanship & Chartwork and Electricity Searchlights courses while serving in the Royal Marines from September 1935 to January 1939. He joined the Royal Marines on the 1st of September 1935 at Depot RM Deal. On the 20th of December 1935 he went to Plymouth Division and on the 30th of April 1936 to Portsmouth Division. From 14th September 1936 to 31st October 1936 he served on Depot ship HMS “Iron Duke” at Scapa Flow. In the period from the 1st of November 1936 to the 28th of November 1937 he went back to Portsmouth Division, Depot RM Deal and Plymouth Division. He served on heavy cruiser HMS “Cornwall” from the 29th of November 1937 until the 5th of January 1938 and on the battleship HMS “Revenge” from the 6th of January 1938 until the 30th of December 1938. On the last day of the year he went back to Plymouth Division where he resigned commission in the rank of Lieutenant on the 30th of January 1939. From May 1939 until late October 1939 he worked in different theatres as (Assistant) Stage Manager and re-joined the Royal Marines on the 26th October 1939 in RM Brigade. On the 6th of May 1940 he was promoted Acting Captain and disembarked at Reykjavik for the invasion of neutral Iceland on the 10th after Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway. A/Capt. Donnell was back in England on the 24th of May 1940 and arrived at Plymouth Division on the 10th of July 1940. He was in Freetown from August 1940 to February 1941. On the 20th of November 1941 he was promoted Temporary Acting Major and on the 12th of February 1943 went to shore establishment HMS “Tormentor” and on the 1st of August 1943 went to Holding Commando. He joined 47 RM Commando on the 28th of January 1944 as 2i/c at the rank of A/Ty Major and served with them until the 13th of July 1945. On the 4th of January 1945 he became the new Commanding Officer of 47 RM Commando as A/Ty Lt-Col. From 14th July 1945 to 18th December 1945 he was at RM Training Group (Wales) and on the 19th of December 1945 he went back to Plymouth Division and was released Class ‘A’ on the 20th of February 1946 granted the War Service Rank of Lt-Col. on release.

X-Troop (Signals). Ron Everton served as a signaller with 47 RM Commando, landing at Gold Beach on D-Day and on Walcheren, having had two landing craft sunk under him on the way in at Westkapelle.After the war, Ron served as a firefighter in Coventry, the city of his birth, until retiring with the rank of Chief Fire Officer.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

(*Military Cross) RAMC att. HQ Troop.

Wounded 18 June 1944.

Missing 7 June 1944.

HQ & Q Troop. Sgt. Gibson was wounded in the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, when his LCA was the first to be hit probably by shell fire from Le Hamel or Longues-sur-Mer.

Mne. Bob Godfrey's landing craft was hit during the run in to Gold Beach on D-Day. There were only three survivors, he and his mate Mne. T.R. Griffiths were picked up by another vessel. After the war Bob became cartoonist and is famous for the children's animation 'Roobarb'.

RA att. HQ Troop. Wounded 19 August 1944.

HQ Troop (Signals). Thomas Griffiths’ landing craft was hit going in to Gold Beach with only three survivors. He was picked up by another craft which was also hit. Yet another craft picked him up and returned to England and then came back the next day to Port en Bessin.

His service continued right through to Belgium. It is believed that his cousin, Arthur Bradley, was lost in the first landing craft and Bob Godfrey, the cartoonist (children’s animation Roobarb etc), was one of his mates in his troop.

Mne. Guymer was the CO's driver, and was killed by a V2 rocket while visiting an Antwerp cinema.

HQ-Troop (Signals). James Patrick Hagan originally came from No.4 Army Commando, but six days after the Walcheren assault was attached to 47 RM Commando HQ as Signaller. Pat Hagan was born on the 6th of May 1925 in Louth and although christened James Patrick, was always known as Pat or Patrick. His family moved to Grimsby, where Patrick started at Welhome School and always claimed he only went to school 'for shelter'. He started his career in fish and chips at an early age when he helped his brother, Danny in his fish and chip shop near Grimsby docks. It was so rough that Patrick said he joined up at 16 in 1942 to get away from it.

He passed out as a Royal Marine and volunteered for commando training.

One of Patrick's first assignments (aged just 17) was to the small-scale raiding squad when, having landed by parachute in France, night raids were carried out on German positions, before finding their way back to the coast to be picked up covertly by the Royal Navy.

On D-Day he landed with the French troops on Sword Beach. Having successfully negotiated the ravages of the D-Day landings, he was assigned to support Lord Lovatt at the crossing of the famous Pegasus Bridge and spent 83 days in continuous action alongside 6th Airborne Division.

He then fought on through France and into Belgium. He was sent into Bruges with 2 colleagues in plain clothes to find out whether the Germans were going to defend the city. His unit then moved into Bruges to prepare and re-equip for the allied attack on the German position of the island of Walcheren in Holland. He went on to serve in Germany, India and Hong Kong before being demobbed in 1946 aged just 21.

His first job in civilian life was travelling the east coast buying herrings for a Grimsby firm. He loved this. After this he spent a year on a trawler out of Grimsby, The Prince Victor. Later on, buying the premises next door and eventually re-modelling both sites to become the legend that was 'Mr Chips'.

HQ Troop (Signals)

Wounded 7 June 1944.

Cpl. (later CQMS) 'Chuck' Harris came as a Sergeant from Special Services - Waterproofing and Amphibious Expert. He joined 47 Commando early May 1944. As the Commando did not require a senior NCO for his particular job, he had to shed his stripes. He served with 47 Commando until late November 1945 getting back to Corporal. He was then posted to 20th Battalion where he was made up to Company Quarter Master Sergeant. A year later he left the Corps and served in the Metropolitan Police until his retirement.

Peter Edward Harvey was a 1943 Lympstone recruit. In the Walcheren assault his landing craft was hit by artillery or mortar fire, and some of his friends were killed in front of him. He was carrying a radio, whose weight nearly caused him to drown as he jumped out to get ashore. He was being sniped at as he tried to scale a massive sand dune. Later he ended up in Hong Kong. He left the service on 2nd Nov 1946.

(*Distinguished Service Cross) The Rev. Reginald Haw DSC, was the chaplain of 47 RM Commando during the D-Day operations.

Mne. Peter Hogan served in the Commando seeing action from the Normandy landings to the liberation of Walcheren. Mne. Derek 'Slim' Shead of Heavy Weapons (S) Troop was a close family friend.

Driver.

Killed in action 1 November 1944.

Wounded 7 June 1944.

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.

Wounded 20 June 1944.

Killed in action 7 June 1944.

Killed in action 6 June 1944.

HQ & Q Troop. Wounded 2 November 1944.

Wounded 1 November 1944.

RAMC att. HQ Troop. Ronald William, better known as “Ginger” Liggins served and landed with 47 RM Commando in both Normandy and on Walcheren. In the Walcheren landings the medical weasel (one of two) which Ginger was driving took a hit. After it sank he managed with great difficulty to reach the dunes. When a volunteer driver was required for a salvaged weasel, Ginger went forward but was beaten to it by a friend who waved cheerily as he left but ran over a mine after about 100 yards and was instantly killed.

Missing 7 June 1944.

Wounded 7 June 1944.

Signals Officer appointed 5 August 1943.

Wounded 1 November,.killed in action 3 November 1944.

HQ Troop (Signals) att. A Troop.

HQ 4 Special Service Brigade.

RA att. HQ Troop. Evacuated sick 25 June 1944.

Wounded 6 June 1944.

A & HQ Troop

(*Distinguished Service Order)

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

(*Military Medal)

George Charles Riddle joined 47 RM Commando on the 18th of August 1943 until going to Royal Marines Training Group on the 17th of January 1946. On the 27th of March 1946 he went to Portsmouth Division where he was released in Class 'A' on the 31st of May 1946.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

HQ Troop (Signals)

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

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.

HQ & Y Troop

Sgt. Joe Smith served with 40 & 43 Commando as well as with 47 Commando from 1943 until he was de-mobbed in 1945.

He was part of the Commando Force that invaded Iceland on 10th May 1940. This is well documented in his diary.

Joe rarely spoke about his time in the war but liked to tell a story that he once nearly had a signed photograph of Adolf Hitler. That was until his Troop Commander noticed it missing from the desk and shouted for Smith to put it back, he stole the Icelandic German Consuls Photograph Album as a substitute to the photo of Hitler.

A & HQ Troop

Distinguished Service Order

Wounded 16 June 1944.

RE att. A & HQ Troops.

Ernest Staphnill was a Royal Engineer attached to A & HQ Troops from the Royal Engineers Corps. He was a driver on a Weasel during the Walcheren landings. Brought up in the West Midlands, Ernie Staphnill was in a reserved occupation in Smethwick then Birmingham, at one point working on Rolls Royce Merlin engines. He joined the Home Guard and manned ack-ack guns during air raids before being called up early in 1944 to the 52 Lowland Division Royal Engineers where he learnt to drive all kinds of military transport in all manner of conditions. He and other drivers joined 47 RM Commando just outside Caen, helping to replace the considerable casualties which had been taken, then moved on to Fécamp and eventually Antwerp. Subsequently, he took part in the landing on Walcheren driving a Weasel and stayed with the Commando until its disbandment.

RAMC att. HQ Troop.

John Tarbin was called up in 1942 to the Royal Marines. Having passed a driving course with flying colours, he was posted to 47 RM Commando early in 1944 and became “Doc” Forfar’s driver. He was instrumental in devising a system whereby wounded could be transported using two stretchers lashed across a jeep. John often helped Captain Forfar and his medical staff in picking up the wounded from the battlefield, himself receiving shrapnel wounds in the process.

Killed in action 1 November 1944.

Wounded 6 June 1944.

HQ & X Troop

A, HQ, Q & Y-Troop (Signals)

On 6 June 1944, Arthur was in one of the landing craft which sunk after it received a direct hit from German mortar fire. Arthur was brought back to Portsmouth to recover and get refitted, and rejoined 47 Commando after the liberation of Port-en-Bessin in the Sallenelles area.

Wounded 13/14 January 1945.

HQ & Q Troop + Transport

On 5 August 1943 was appointed Administration Officer in the rank of Lieutenant

Eric Vaughan was born at Bryn Mor Cottage in Bodelwyddan, son to proud parents John and Marion and big brother to his sister Iris. Growing up in Bodelwyddan, whilst Eric was still at school, he began working in the local village shop. He left school at 14 and began working for E.B. Jones delivering groceries.

In 1942, when he was 19, Eric volunteered for the Royal Marines. He was offered Landing Craft but decided he didn’t want to spend all his time at sea and so volunteered for Commando training. In July ’43, assigned to 41 Commando, he sailed out from Liverpool to North Africa where he was involved in the battles to push the Germans and Italians out, which they did, then following them over to Sicily to do the same, before being called backed to Britain in May’ 44 to prepare for the landings in Normandy.

Eric landed in Normandy on D-Day+14, driving a 3-ton truck. Landing on a deserted beach, with no one to guide them and not knowing where to go, Eric and another driver parked up in a field and put camouflage over their vehicles to spend what was a very scary night. Fortunately they met up with their troop the following day.

At some time, he was assigned to 47 RM Commando and was with them when they liberated Fécamp on the 2nd September 1944. He then continued pursuing the Germans back through France, to Belgium and on into Holland. He made it into Germany at the wars end and was eventually demobbed in 1946.

Upon returning home, Eric began working as a civilian for the Ministry of Defence at the Kinmel Camp. His first role was supervising German prisoners of war, dismantling the concrete beach defences from Talacre to Llanduddno. He worked at the camp for 28 years, until it closed in 1975. He then started work at the Egatube (electrical conduit) factory at St Asaph; working there for 11 years until he retired when he was 64.

Wounded 15 July 1944.

Wounded 19 June 1944.

Killed in action 6 June 1944.

HQ & Q Troop

HQ Troop (Signals)

HQ Troop (Signals)

Wounded 1 November 1944. Eric Wood enlisted in the Royal Marines in Chatham in 1935 and received the King’s Badgeman award in 1936. He was recruited as an RSM with 47 RM Commando in time for the Walcheren landings and was reported wounded on 1st November 1944 and later that he was killed in action. In fact, he was treated for his wounds within the unit and returned swiftly to his duties and on the surrender of one of the German batteries: “…192 of them… emerged… and under the direction of RSM Wood flung their weapons in a heap.” On leaving the service, Eric held the rank of Lieutenant.

Prisoner of War 7 June 1944.

HQ & A Troop. Wounded 6 June & 16 August 1944.

Capt. 'Timber' Wood, was promoted to Major and acting Lt.Col. towards the end of the war, later became Adjutant.

Mne. F.A. Wright (act. ty. L/Cpl) served with X-Troop from November '43 to August '44, HQ-Troop from August '44 to September '45.