In remembrance of Private William Prince - Parachute Regt
May 21, 2016 11:27:54 GMT
Post by shred on May 21, 2016 11:27:54 GMT
Another superb write up from forum member Jimbeau.
VISIT TO THE WAR CEMETERIES
In late April 2015 three of Grandad Prince’s Grandchildren, along with myself, a surrogate Grandchild, embarked on a pilgrimage to Northern France to visit the graves of Grandad Prince at St Venant and his son, William Prince (of whom more about later) at Hermanville sur Mer.
We had decided to visit ‘Wipers’ (Ypres now Ieper) to witness the Last Post Ceremony, so our journey on the Continent began in Dunkirk.
The Last Post Ceremony takes place every evening at 8.00pm at the Menin Gate when traffic through the gate is stopped and four buglers from the local fire brigade march into position and play The Last Post. With the exception of the German occupied years during World War II, the ceremony has been performed every evening since it started in 1927 and in July this year, the 30,000th occasion was performed.
From 11th November last year (2014), there has been an extended ceremony each evening when individual soldiers are remembered and wreaths are laid by family members, Commonwealth Institutions and schools from the UK and Commonwealth countries. We were fortunate to witness one of these moving occasions.
The Menin Gate itself commemorates 54,395 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who have no known grave. These are men who took part in the five major battles of Ypres, which included the infamous Passchendaele conflict of 1917.
The site of this memorial was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed down this road on their way to the battlefields. It took many years to build and inscribe all the names upon it and it opened on 24th July, 1927. During this building period, it soon became apparent that the panels would not be large enough to contain all the names of the missing, so a cut-off date of 15th August, 1917 was chosen and the names of a further 34,984 missing, killed after the cut-off date, were inscribed on the Tyne Cot Memorial.
Every year since the end of WW1 remains of soldiers have been unearthed during the cultivation of farmland, road excavations and building projects and if identified, they are given a proper burial in a war cemetery and their name is then erased from the memorial.
We stayed overnight just outside Ypres in the village of Hooge and little did we know at the time of booking that the hotel is situated on the old ‘front line’, so after breakfast the following morning we explored the site. We learned that Hooge Chateau was here originally and used as a British Divisional Headquarters and hosted Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig, but on 31st October, 1914 it took a direct hit by a German shell which destroyed it. The area fell into German control when they attacked with the first flame-throwers driving the British out. The British, using Durham miners, dug a 190 ft long tunnel to below the German positions where concrete fortifications were being constructed. This tunnel was completed in a remarkable five and a half weeks. Explosives were laid under the fortifications and detonated on 19th July, 1915, creating the largest explosion thus far in the war. Ten of the British troops, waiting to seize the moment and attack, were killed by debris along with several hundred German troops. The resulting crater was 120 ft diameter and 20 ft deep and is now a picturesque pond in the grounds of the hotel.
Preserved trenches and pill-boxes in the hotel grounds are accessible, so Lynda and myself walked the muddy trenches while Jean and Margaret walked along the parapet and so continued the natural order of Generals and ‘cannon fodder’.
As the Tyne Cot Cemetery was only a few miles away we decided to visit it, so a few minor lanes later and the village of Passchendaele, we reached Tyne Cot. Tyne Cot is the largest British War Cemetery in the world, holding 11,954 graves, 8,367 of them unnamed, ‘Known only to God’. It is set in lovely countryside making it difficult to believe that almost 100 years ago this was a quagmire swallowing up men, horses and equipment.
Our route to St Venant took us passed many small Commonwealth Graves Commission cemeteries and many towns and villages whose names will forever be associated with WW1.
St Venant is a small town in Pas de Calais having a population of just over 3,000, most of whom were absent when we arrived. It was just before 100pm and all the shops were closed and the town was deserted, so a good time to explore. Like many other small French towns it has a large church which dominates. The next largest building in the town is the old hospital or asylum, which is now mostly let out to small businesses. The building itself looks very much as it would have done when it was used as a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) by the British Army in 1917. Charlie Prince spent his last days in this CCS. From here we followed what was probably the same route as the burial party did almost 100 years ago, to the communal cemetery on the edge of town. Although this cemetery is for use by the township of St Venant, a quiet corner is now tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for those soldiers that died locally during both World Wars, of which there are 253 from WW1 and 177 from WW2. The dead from WW2 are men who covered the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force to the coast and who continued fighting at St Venant after the evacuation at Dunkirk. Ninety of these men had originally been buried in a mass grave.
A few minutes of silent thought by all and then a sad walk around the other graves before finally adding a comment in the visitors’ log. It is difficult to express the gratitude we owe to all these young men who gave the ultimate prize of life for a good and noble cause. We were all glad that we had made the effort and paid our respects.
A four hour car journey in front of us and a switch to WW2, we headed to Normandy to pay our respects to Uncle Billy, (although the family knew him as Billy we find later that his friends and colleagues knew him as Bill).
BILL PRINCE’S STORY
Bill Prince, you may recall, was born just a couple of months prior to his father’s signing-up for the army in 1915, so he had not reached his second birthday when Charlie was killed. Living in Dudley Street, Higher Broughton, he more than likely followed his brothers and sister in going to Garnet Street School and then on to Marlborough Road School.
In 1934, Bill married Ethel Whatmough and in September of that year Joan Ethel, their first daughter, was born at 35 Henrietta Street. At this time, Bill is recorded as being a motor driver. Janice was born in 1940 and finally young William in 1941.
At the outbreak of WW2, Bill answered the call to duty and enlisted in the Royal Artillery. He later volunteered to become a parachutist in the Airborne Division. He was accepted and attended a Parachute Training Course at RAF Ringway (now Manchester International Airport) from 18th to 30th October, 1943, Course No. 88. 268 trainees attended this course and at the end of it Bill was recorded as “conscientious and reliable” by his instructor. On completion of the course, he was posted to the 13th Parachute Battalion based at Newcombe Lines, Larkhill on Salisbury Plain and became Private William Prince 2047238, 13th (2/4 The South Lancashire Regiment) Battalion, The Parachute Regiment.
Like his father, Bill became part of a Machine Gun team in the 8th Platoon of ‘C’ Company under Lieutenant Ellis ‘Dixie’ Dean and Lieutenant Jack Sharples. The team was known as MMG’s (Medium Machine Gunners).
Throughout the Autumn of 1943 more and more volunteers joined the Battalion and by the middle of December it was at full strength. Until this time all training had been carried out at Platoon level and consisted mainly of improving individual physical fitness with a few jumps from old aircraft.
In mid-January 1944 the whole Battalion was taken to Manchester by rail for a fixed bayonet march-past through the city centre, where the salute was taken by the Mayor and Lord Derby. This was followed by well-earned leave.
Training was stepped up in March and mass Battalion descents were made followed by a whole Brigade descent. In late April, Exercise Mush was launched which involved the complete Division and which was a rehearsal for what was about to unfold as ‘D Day’. Finally a night aircraft jump for all and they were ready for Operation Tonga, the prelude to Operation Overlord.
Towards the end of May another exercise was announced, but everyone correctly guessed that this would be the real thing. On 25th May, the Battalion was taken to the Transit Camp at Brize Norton, with the exception of the Machine Gun Platoon, who went with the 12th (Yorkshire) Battalion Parachute Regiment to a Transit Camp at nearby Keevil.
The Battalion’s officers were briefed in great detail in the Model Room at Brize Norton which had a large model on its floor of the landings zone and objectives. Discussions then took place in a map room where the officers were shown a large map of the mouth of the River Orne, the towns of Caen and Troarn and the villages of Ranville, Herouvillette, Escoville, Breville and Saint Honnorine, names which they had never heard of.
The 13th’s task was to provide protection for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who were to capture and secure the bridges over the River Orne and Caen Canal (the latter was renamed ‘Pegasus Bridge’ to honour the paratroops who captured it, Pegasus being their cap badge emblem).
They also had to capture and secure the town of Ranville and one company had to protect a Company of Royal Engineers, whose task was to remove anti-glider posts which had been erected in the surrounding fields to prevent landings.
The date of 5th June was set to be ‘D Day’ and all preparations were in place, but because the fine weather had deteriorated into thunderstorms and strong winds it was postponed for 24 hours. There was a slight improvement on the morning of 5th June so preparations were made once again. The Machine Gunners had their “fat free” meal of two slices of bully beef, mashed potatoes and lettuce, followed by boiled rice with raisins,
Keevil Camp was several miles from the airfield, so the Machine Gun Platoon was driven through the village with the 12th Battalion, where all the inhabitants turned out to cheer them on. At the airfield two squadrons of Sterling’s were waiting to load them, two aircraft being reserved for the Machine Gun Platoon. In his stick, Bill was jumping number three with a Vickers Gun and by 23.50 the last aircraft was airborne. A total of eight airfields were used to launch the 6th Airborne using Albermarle, Dakota and Sterling aircraft.
At 00.50 hours on 6th June, the 13th Battalion were dropping onto Drop Zone “N“, north of Ranville. Bill landed in a field full of frightened cows and was soon joined by Lieutenant Dean (No. 1 to jump) and Lance Corporal Harold Turner (No. 2) and others slowly met up with them. Fortunately they had landed close to the Drop Zone, but other flights had dropped their sticks of paratroops up to 30 miles from the target, which meant that men, ammunition and equipment were lost or unavailable for a considerable time. From the rendezvous point, Lieutenant Dean took members of the Platoon who were not actually managing a gun, back to the Drop Zone to look for ammunition which would have been released from the aircraft. The gunners left were soon in action and deterred an enemy attack by firing on approaching tanks, setting five on fire and causing the Germans to retreat.
Despite heavy mortaring and machine gun fire, the anti-glider posts had been removed and the ditches filled in by 03.00 hours. At 03.15 gliders began to land with welcome personnel and heavy equipment.
The other task of the Battalion was to clear and hold Ranville, which was the approach to the Orne bridges. This they did by 02.30. One of the tasks of 8 Platoon was to clear the enemy from the chateau in the village and on approaching they became under machine gun fire. After a short exchange of fire the Germans left in a hurry and Bill, along with Lieutenant Jack Sharples and Private Orrel entered the chateau. They surveyed the ground floor before proceeding upstairs where they were confronted by le Comte de Ranville and his wife, both protesting about the intrusion of their property. Lieutenant Sharples tried to explain that they were British and part of the invasion force, but back came a torrent of French which was not understood, so Lieutenant Sharples put them into a bedroom, took the key from the door and made gestures for them to lock themselves in until morning.
Having successfully achieved what was required of them, the Battalion now had to hold their ground as Operation Overlord commenced on the beaches nearby. Their commitment to doing this continued over a longer period than had been intended and they were under heavy mortar fire for much of the time. An entry from the 13th Battalion log for 12th June 1944 reads:-
Place: Ranville
06.00 Fairly quiet night - slight shelling and bombing.
14.30 Our Arty shelling BREVILLE.
15.30 to 16.00 Area mortared - 1 O.R. killed
21.45 Very heavy Arty barrage put down by our arty on BREVILLE, preparatory to attack by 12 Para Bn and 1 Coy 12 Devons.
13 Para Bn casualties for 12 Jun 44
Killed --1 OR, wounded 1 OR (OR--other ranks)
This fatality is assumed to be Bill who is recorded as being killed 12th June 1944. He is buried in Hermanville War Cemetery near to Lion sur Mer in grave 1K8. There are 1,003 war burials in this cemetery, very few of which are paratroops but mostly casualties of 6th June landings on nearby Sword Beach.
The cemetery at Hermanville is on the edge of town and like all war cemeteries, it is well-manicured and at the time of our evening visit it was very tranquil. Having paid our respects, the ladies made their comments in the visitors’ log before we departed.
The following morning we walked along Sword Beach to Juno Beach, finding it difficult to imagine that thousands of troops had disembarked from scores of naval ships via landing craft and ran up the beach under constant machine gun fire. Their successful operation ensured that Europe would be free from German control now that the tide of war had turned.
The return trip along the promenade showed many preserved German bunkers and artillery, all of which had been highlighted for the 2014 70th anniversary celebrations.
All in all, a trip well worth doing.
VISIT TO THE WAR CEMETERIES
In late April 2015 three of Grandad Prince’s Grandchildren, along with myself, a surrogate Grandchild, embarked on a pilgrimage to Northern France to visit the graves of Grandad Prince at St Venant and his son, William Prince (of whom more about later) at Hermanville sur Mer.
We had decided to visit ‘Wipers’ (Ypres now Ieper) to witness the Last Post Ceremony, so our journey on the Continent began in Dunkirk.
The Last Post Ceremony takes place every evening at 8.00pm at the Menin Gate when traffic through the gate is stopped and four buglers from the local fire brigade march into position and play The Last Post. With the exception of the German occupied years during World War II, the ceremony has been performed every evening since it started in 1927 and in July this year, the 30,000th occasion was performed.
From 11th November last year (2014), there has been an extended ceremony each evening when individual soldiers are remembered and wreaths are laid by family members, Commonwealth Institutions and schools from the UK and Commonwealth countries. We were fortunate to witness one of these moving occasions.
The Menin Gate itself commemorates 54,395 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who have no known grave. These are men who took part in the five major battles of Ypres, which included the infamous Passchendaele conflict of 1917.
The site of this memorial was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed down this road on their way to the battlefields. It took many years to build and inscribe all the names upon it and it opened on 24th July, 1927. During this building period, it soon became apparent that the panels would not be large enough to contain all the names of the missing, so a cut-off date of 15th August, 1917 was chosen and the names of a further 34,984 missing, killed after the cut-off date, were inscribed on the Tyne Cot Memorial.
Every year since the end of WW1 remains of soldiers have been unearthed during the cultivation of farmland, road excavations and building projects and if identified, they are given a proper burial in a war cemetery and their name is then erased from the memorial.
We stayed overnight just outside Ypres in the village of Hooge and little did we know at the time of booking that the hotel is situated on the old ‘front line’, so after breakfast the following morning we explored the site. We learned that Hooge Chateau was here originally and used as a British Divisional Headquarters and hosted Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig, but on 31st October, 1914 it took a direct hit by a German shell which destroyed it. The area fell into German control when they attacked with the first flame-throwers driving the British out. The British, using Durham miners, dug a 190 ft long tunnel to below the German positions where concrete fortifications were being constructed. This tunnel was completed in a remarkable five and a half weeks. Explosives were laid under the fortifications and detonated on 19th July, 1915, creating the largest explosion thus far in the war. Ten of the British troops, waiting to seize the moment and attack, were killed by debris along with several hundred German troops. The resulting crater was 120 ft diameter and 20 ft deep and is now a picturesque pond in the grounds of the hotel.
Preserved trenches and pill-boxes in the hotel grounds are accessible, so Lynda and myself walked the muddy trenches while Jean and Margaret walked along the parapet and so continued the natural order of Generals and ‘cannon fodder’.
As the Tyne Cot Cemetery was only a few miles away we decided to visit it, so a few minor lanes later and the village of Passchendaele, we reached Tyne Cot. Tyne Cot is the largest British War Cemetery in the world, holding 11,954 graves, 8,367 of them unnamed, ‘Known only to God’. It is set in lovely countryside making it difficult to believe that almost 100 years ago this was a quagmire swallowing up men, horses and equipment.
Our route to St Venant took us passed many small Commonwealth Graves Commission cemeteries and many towns and villages whose names will forever be associated with WW1.
St Venant is a small town in Pas de Calais having a population of just over 3,000, most of whom were absent when we arrived. It was just before 100pm and all the shops were closed and the town was deserted, so a good time to explore. Like many other small French towns it has a large church which dominates. The next largest building in the town is the old hospital or asylum, which is now mostly let out to small businesses. The building itself looks very much as it would have done when it was used as a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) by the British Army in 1917. Charlie Prince spent his last days in this CCS. From here we followed what was probably the same route as the burial party did almost 100 years ago, to the communal cemetery on the edge of town. Although this cemetery is for use by the township of St Venant, a quiet corner is now tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for those soldiers that died locally during both World Wars, of which there are 253 from WW1 and 177 from WW2. The dead from WW2 are men who covered the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force to the coast and who continued fighting at St Venant after the evacuation at Dunkirk. Ninety of these men had originally been buried in a mass grave.
A few minutes of silent thought by all and then a sad walk around the other graves before finally adding a comment in the visitors’ log. It is difficult to express the gratitude we owe to all these young men who gave the ultimate prize of life for a good and noble cause. We were all glad that we had made the effort and paid our respects.
A four hour car journey in front of us and a switch to WW2, we headed to Normandy to pay our respects to Uncle Billy, (although the family knew him as Billy we find later that his friends and colleagues knew him as Bill).
BILL PRINCE’S STORY
Bill Prince, you may recall, was born just a couple of months prior to his father’s signing-up for the army in 1915, so he had not reached his second birthday when Charlie was killed. Living in Dudley Street, Higher Broughton, he more than likely followed his brothers and sister in going to Garnet Street School and then on to Marlborough Road School.
In 1934, Bill married Ethel Whatmough and in September of that year Joan Ethel, their first daughter, was born at 35 Henrietta Street. At this time, Bill is recorded as being a motor driver. Janice was born in 1940 and finally young William in 1941.
At the outbreak of WW2, Bill answered the call to duty and enlisted in the Royal Artillery. He later volunteered to become a parachutist in the Airborne Division. He was accepted and attended a Parachute Training Course at RAF Ringway (now Manchester International Airport) from 18th to 30th October, 1943, Course No. 88. 268 trainees attended this course and at the end of it Bill was recorded as “conscientious and reliable” by his instructor. On completion of the course, he was posted to the 13th Parachute Battalion based at Newcombe Lines, Larkhill on Salisbury Plain and became Private William Prince 2047238, 13th (2/4 The South Lancashire Regiment) Battalion, The Parachute Regiment.
Like his father, Bill became part of a Machine Gun team in the 8th Platoon of ‘C’ Company under Lieutenant Ellis ‘Dixie’ Dean and Lieutenant Jack Sharples. The team was known as MMG’s (Medium Machine Gunners).
Throughout the Autumn of 1943 more and more volunteers joined the Battalion and by the middle of December it was at full strength. Until this time all training had been carried out at Platoon level and consisted mainly of improving individual physical fitness with a few jumps from old aircraft.
In mid-January 1944 the whole Battalion was taken to Manchester by rail for a fixed bayonet march-past through the city centre, where the salute was taken by the Mayor and Lord Derby. This was followed by well-earned leave.
Training was stepped up in March and mass Battalion descents were made followed by a whole Brigade descent. In late April, Exercise Mush was launched which involved the complete Division and which was a rehearsal for what was about to unfold as ‘D Day’. Finally a night aircraft jump for all and they were ready for Operation Tonga, the prelude to Operation Overlord.
Towards the end of May another exercise was announced, but everyone correctly guessed that this would be the real thing. On 25th May, the Battalion was taken to the Transit Camp at Brize Norton, with the exception of the Machine Gun Platoon, who went with the 12th (Yorkshire) Battalion Parachute Regiment to a Transit Camp at nearby Keevil.
The Battalion’s officers were briefed in great detail in the Model Room at Brize Norton which had a large model on its floor of the landings zone and objectives. Discussions then took place in a map room where the officers were shown a large map of the mouth of the River Orne, the towns of Caen and Troarn and the villages of Ranville, Herouvillette, Escoville, Breville and Saint Honnorine, names which they had never heard of.
The 13th’s task was to provide protection for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who were to capture and secure the bridges over the River Orne and Caen Canal (the latter was renamed ‘Pegasus Bridge’ to honour the paratroops who captured it, Pegasus being their cap badge emblem).
They also had to capture and secure the town of Ranville and one company had to protect a Company of Royal Engineers, whose task was to remove anti-glider posts which had been erected in the surrounding fields to prevent landings.
The date of 5th June was set to be ‘D Day’ and all preparations were in place, but because the fine weather had deteriorated into thunderstorms and strong winds it was postponed for 24 hours. There was a slight improvement on the morning of 5th June so preparations were made once again. The Machine Gunners had their “fat free” meal of two slices of bully beef, mashed potatoes and lettuce, followed by boiled rice with raisins,
Keevil Camp was several miles from the airfield, so the Machine Gun Platoon was driven through the village with the 12th Battalion, where all the inhabitants turned out to cheer them on. At the airfield two squadrons of Sterling’s were waiting to load them, two aircraft being reserved for the Machine Gun Platoon. In his stick, Bill was jumping number three with a Vickers Gun and by 23.50 the last aircraft was airborne. A total of eight airfields were used to launch the 6th Airborne using Albermarle, Dakota and Sterling aircraft.
At 00.50 hours on 6th June, the 13th Battalion were dropping onto Drop Zone “N“, north of Ranville. Bill landed in a field full of frightened cows and was soon joined by Lieutenant Dean (No. 1 to jump) and Lance Corporal Harold Turner (No. 2) and others slowly met up with them. Fortunately they had landed close to the Drop Zone, but other flights had dropped their sticks of paratroops up to 30 miles from the target, which meant that men, ammunition and equipment were lost or unavailable for a considerable time. From the rendezvous point, Lieutenant Dean took members of the Platoon who were not actually managing a gun, back to the Drop Zone to look for ammunition which would have been released from the aircraft. The gunners left were soon in action and deterred an enemy attack by firing on approaching tanks, setting five on fire and causing the Germans to retreat.
Despite heavy mortaring and machine gun fire, the anti-glider posts had been removed and the ditches filled in by 03.00 hours. At 03.15 gliders began to land with welcome personnel and heavy equipment.
The other task of the Battalion was to clear and hold Ranville, which was the approach to the Orne bridges. This they did by 02.30. One of the tasks of 8 Platoon was to clear the enemy from the chateau in the village and on approaching they became under machine gun fire. After a short exchange of fire the Germans left in a hurry and Bill, along with Lieutenant Jack Sharples and Private Orrel entered the chateau. They surveyed the ground floor before proceeding upstairs where they were confronted by le Comte de Ranville and his wife, both protesting about the intrusion of their property. Lieutenant Sharples tried to explain that they were British and part of the invasion force, but back came a torrent of French which was not understood, so Lieutenant Sharples put them into a bedroom, took the key from the door and made gestures for them to lock themselves in until morning.
Having successfully achieved what was required of them, the Battalion now had to hold their ground as Operation Overlord commenced on the beaches nearby. Their commitment to doing this continued over a longer period than had been intended and they were under heavy mortar fire for much of the time. An entry from the 13th Battalion log for 12th June 1944 reads:-
Place: Ranville
06.00 Fairly quiet night - slight shelling and bombing.
14.30 Our Arty shelling BREVILLE.
15.30 to 16.00 Area mortared - 1 O.R. killed
21.45 Very heavy Arty barrage put down by our arty on BREVILLE, preparatory to attack by 12 Para Bn and 1 Coy 12 Devons.
13 Para Bn casualties for 12 Jun 44
Killed --1 OR, wounded 1 OR (OR--other ranks)
This fatality is assumed to be Bill who is recorded as being killed 12th June 1944. He is buried in Hermanville War Cemetery near to Lion sur Mer in grave 1K8. There are 1,003 war burials in this cemetery, very few of which are paratroops but mostly casualties of 6th June landings on nearby Sword Beach.
The cemetery at Hermanville is on the edge of town and like all war cemeteries, it is well-manicured and at the time of our evening visit it was very tranquil. Having paid our respects, the ladies made their comments in the visitors’ log before we departed.
The following morning we walked along Sword Beach to Juno Beach, finding it difficult to imagine that thousands of troops had disembarked from scores of naval ships via landing craft and ran up the beach under constant machine gun fire. Their successful operation ensured that Europe would be free from German control now that the tide of war had turned.
The return trip along the promenade showed many preserved German bunkers and artillery, all of which had been highlighted for the 2014 70th anniversary celebrations.
All in all, a trip well worth doing.
