Memorabilia
Loopy Kennard , or to give him his full title, Sir George Arnold Ford Kennard, 3rd Baronet, was a formerly a Captain in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars and was taken prisoner at Kalamata, in Greece, in June 1942 along with most of the regiment.
I first met him in 1946 when he took command of "A" Squadron and I was a lowly Tech Corporal.
In 1990 he publish his autobiography "Loopy", I wrote to him and, in return, received his delightful reply.
Loopy died in 1999 and his obituary in the Times and Telegraph made good reading.
posted by Ron Goldstein at 7:18 am
11 Comments:
It is generally accepted that the battles in which Loopy Kennard and the greater part of the 4QOH went into the bag at the Cauldron/Knightsbridge area was... to quote the late Major Roy Farran DSO.MC.
"Then began certain miscalculations by the Generals, which turned victory into defeat. I do not know what other facts have come to light,but no soldier who fought in that battle can ever excuse those high ranking officers who at the time were damned but have since been resurrected."
From that battle of course we lost the complete 150th Brigade of the 50th Division - 2nd - 4th - 7th Armoured Brigades were decimated along with the 1st and 32nd Tank bdes. The Gazala gallop then began to get back to Alamein One.
The miscalculating Generals were of course Ritchie - Norrie - Gott - Lumsden - Gatehouse... as we now know Gott was killed.. Lumsden went on to the Pacific as Liasson to Mac Arthur and Ritchie was given the 12th corps in the 2nd Army in NW Europe... the others just disappeared.
Monty had many difficulties with his Armour,particularly just after the final battle of El Alamein when Lumsden's Corps got lost ! Until finally at El Hamma,Tunisia March '43 the famous blitz attack led by Horrocks which sorted out the Armoured tactics of co-operation with Infantry from then on.
Those were hard days
Further to my last comment -
The jealousy and acrimonious conduct of most of the Desert Generals of that time was unbelievable, since the loss of O'Conner - De Wairt - Neame and Combe into the bag at Rommel's first forey from El Agheila, Rommel had really nothing of good Generalship of any consquence against him. Cunningham - Messervy and all the others listed were all too busy scoring points off each other to the extent that Godwin- Austin finally asked Auchinleck to accept his resignation !The South Africans were no better with Armstrong - Pienaar - and the loser of Tobruk - Kloppers.
Thankfully we had people such as Harding - Carver - "PiP"Roberts
coming up and the Rock of New Zealand - Freyburg still in charge and with the import by Monty of Leese - Kirkman - Horrocks - 8th Army went on to knock Rommel for six out of Africa starting at Alam Halfa...the rest - as they say is history and the 4thQOH were restored sufficiently by August to stand in the boiling sun being inspected by their Colonal -in - Chief - the man himself WSC !
One of the least known causes for the Gazala Gallop was the actions of one US.Colonel Bonnar Fellers as liason with 8th Arm,y even in Wavell's time.
He was a trusted emissary of the USA and had the privelage of sitting in on the Commander -in Chief's comittee meetings, and faithfully reporting back to Washington the decisions and conclusions of those meetings.
Unfortunatly the codes he used were quite simaple affairs and the german listening post sitting in Bari - Italy - had very little trouble in breaking and undersatnding every word issued from his office in Cairo !
This went on for months with Rommel having the dispositions of the whole of 8th Army in front of him at all times.
Finally someone in British security smelled a rat but could do very little and so the tragedy went on until after the Gazala gallop - it was suggested to Washington that this man was capable of promotion and was sent back to the US of A as a hero who had been of great service - to which branch of any service was left unsaid and so the Brave Col Bonnar Fellers was looked upon in the USA as a hero - probably to this day !
This stupidity plus the stupidity of the British generals of the times was quite enough to make the Desert campaign a bottomless pit for manpower and supplies.
We can therfore only raise our glasses in honour of Alanbrooke -Alexander- Montgomery- Leese - Horrocks - Harding - Kirkman - Freyberg - Morshead - Tuker for turning the tide of that war.
Please forgive me for posting off-topic here but I wanted to ensure that Frank Mee sees some photos my father (Ken Sheraton, a friend) took in the 30s. And a comment I made elsewhere on this blog late last year.
http://picture.stockton.gov.uk/photos/n1_3.aspx
http://picture.stockton.gov.uk/photos/N1_2.aspx
also - scroll to the end...
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20654932&postID=114746315676391143
Greetings to you all. I hope you had a good Christmas and I wish you a healthy and happy 2007. :)
Sarah Sheraton
(Norton 1969-1984)
Frank/Sarah
Both links work perfectly. Just Copy&Paste them in.
... and a Happy New Year to you too.
Well Peter - copying and Pasting Sarah's threads don't work on my PC ???....and I'm doing it right - honest !
Gents
Copy & Paste but leave out the last portion as below:
http://picture.stockton.gov.uk/photos/
This then opens up the site for browsing
Ron's tip is fine for accessing the site, but I assure you the links are correct. I have re-tested both.
I have made them into 'Tiny URLs', see if that helps (again use Copy & Paste):
http://tinyurl.com/y4soed
and
http://tinyurl.com/y6rfr8
That's simply to show that the links were correctly posted, but for your benefit click here and
here.
The URLs posted by Sarah end with n1_2.aspx and n1_3.aspx.
You probably have your screen resolution set differently from mine and I suspect that both URLs are being clipped of the final letters. This happens in the 'Comments' layout of the blog. In the 'Posts' layout you get the full URL, but the right column is pushed out by a long address.
Next time you have such a problem, copy to the next word after the address then paste in what you have highlighted and copied and delete the copied word.
Get used to understanding URLs. Here's an example:
www.name.com/this_one/here/3.jpg
'www.name.com' is just a look-up to get the IP number of the distant server, the real address. the '/' slash is to show that we want a folder and in there a sub-folder in which there is a file called (in this example) '3.jpg'; '3.jpg' being the photo file we really want.
'www.name.com' is in fact a program on a computer and only the IP number will get us to that computer. In the old days when I first started on the Internet we used to have to put in the IP number and messy protocols. Then some bright spark had the brilliant idea of adopting the telephone book approach with all IP numbers centrally stored, just bang in www.whatsit.com and the IP number is found for you invisibly and you are taken to a file called 'index'html', the opening 'page'. Wish I had thought of that!
Peter :)
Thank you both Ron and Peter - now I got it - the photo's are fascinating but I did not recognise Frank at all... it has been said that education is simpler than re-education.. in my case this appears to be true...as with "url's" etc I am reminded of the old Scottish version of the British Grenadiers
which went something like this -
..."an i loast ma hurl in the barri"
well....
...and why not Frank - a chapter a day will keep all sorts of things away.
We also had our childhood rambling the countryside through the cornfields of the famous Carse of Gowrie where it is known as the biggest producer of raspberries in the world and an area that Peter's wife Margaret knows well as she grew up in that region.
This world does indeed get smaller all the time.
Post a Comment
<< Home