GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY
Guest, front left
It was when the Transvaal Scottish was at Barberton, that a strong rumour circulated to the effect that a Dominion Brigade was to be formed in the U.K. to go across to France with the Invasion. The rumour had it that the Royal Natal Carbineers would form the South African Battalion of this Brigade. The hundred men, including Guest, who volunteered or requested transfers to the R.N.C., were some of the finest in the Regiment and were a great loss to the Scottish. They were not men who had joined the army to do their bit, but rather men who had trained themselves to be aggressive soldiers, men who had one purpose during the war and that was to get on with the job and destroy the enemy.
Harry Guest soon established a reputation for himself in the Carbineers for patrol work and glowing accounts of his work in the Apennines circulated. A Sixth Division colleague is reported in Stoep Talk, by The Pilgrim, at the time as saying of Guest, “Harry is in every way a character, a holy terror at hand-to-hand fighting in which field I dare wager he holds the unofficial record for the number of personal combats engaged in by a South African infantryman.”
In an account of the capture by the Royal Natal Carbineers of Monte Stanco, on the 5th Army front in Italy, an Army observer says that the objective was not just another hill in the Apennines, but a key feature from which, in a savage battle two days before, German S.S. troops had driven back a battalion of Allied troops fighting with the 6th South African Armoured Troops. The Carbineers fought their way up and took their objective and held on to it for seven hours while the mass of Germans, who greatly outnumbered them, formed up and regardless of loss counter-attacked the exposed right flank. Amongst other acts of gallantry performed that day, Corporal Guest, of No. 12 Platoon, led his section which cleaned up four spandaus and found himself at one stage on his feet facing the largest German soldier he swears he’s ever seen, also standing up with a spandau levelled at him! Guest’s tommy gun jammed and as fate would have it the German’s spandau must have also jammed because he didn’t fire either! In those split seconds Harry shouted to the man next to him “Take him Basil” (Sergeant Basil Beam, M.M.), which saved Guest. After the battle of Monte Stanco Guest was granted an Immediate Bar to his M.M. earned three years earlier.
A few days after the battle of Monte Stanco, Acting Sergeant Guest was ordered to Proceed with his depleted platoon to fill a gap between the right hand flank of the 1st City/Cape Town Highlanders and the left hand flank of the Carbineers. It was very misty at the time and visibility was but a few yards. Guest was leading his men in single file and after making contact with the extreme left flank of the Carbineers, suddenly two bursts of spandau fire rent the air wounding the two men immediately behind Guest. Harry realised that the spandau nest could only be a matter of yards away. He ordered his men to fan out, fix bayonets and charge! “We had only covered about 20 pares through the thick mist when suddenly a German officer with his spandau crew of 4 jumped up and surrendered. The prisoners were duly despatched to H.Q. for interrogation.”
He was awarded the Efficiency Medal, Union of South Africa on 30 July 1945, 12 years and 108 days service from 1 July 1937 to 30 July 1945, with war service counting double.
Harry Guest attended the Victory Parade in London in 1946 when he was selected to be the N.C.O. representing the Royal Natal Carbineers, South Africa’s oldest regiment, with thirty four battle honours, ranging from the “Zulu War 1879” to “Italy 1945”. The officer selected was Lieutenant Quentin Smythe, V.C. The South African Contingent numbered 253 men and women. The parade through London took three hours to pass the saluting base before King George VI and others, including Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Smuts. More than 21,000 men and women took part, including some 3,400 Empire troops representing more than 50 Nations and Territories. The marching column was 4 miles long and the mechanised column was 6 miles long.
Guest received the Bar to his M.M. at the hands of King George VI at a general investiture held at Loftus Versveld rugby ground, Pretoria, during the Royal Visit to South Africa in 1947. After being demobilised he served Secretary to the Mayor of Pietermaritzburg from 1948 to 1960. In this position he drafted the Freedom of the City document given by Pietermaritzburg to the Royal Natal Carbineers in 1955, upon celebrating their centenary. Harry Guest died at Pietermaritzburg on 22 April 2004, shortly before his 84th birthday.
Sold with comprehensive research including copied service documents, discharge certificate, R.N.C. War Diary of the action at Stanco (7pp), numerous copied news cuttings and photographs, including one of Guest being invested by the King with his Bar in 1947; full roll of the S.A. Contingent who attended the Victory Parade in London; also copies of his personal experiences recounted extensively in The Jock Column in March 1981, December 1982 and March 1991, and full obituary from the same publication.
www.dnw.co.uk
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