The Barry Hobbs Collection of Great War Medals


The remainder, under Major Rory Stewart-Richardson, made a dash for the embankment. “The Bren gun covering fire was not very effective, because of the long range and the number of German machine guns, and the companies received rather heavy casualties getting into the embankment. The Companies paused in the embankment while they prepared to fight their way back down the railway line. The only help they could get was smoke. Lieutenant Patrick Da Costa led off the first platoon. He was killed almost immediately and his platoon broken into small parties by a German attack. Lance-Corporal O’Brien took command of the largest fragment and brought them back to No. 4 Company by bounds. He himself, with a Bren gun, provided the covering for each bound, running the gauntlet every time to catch up with his party and cover them over the next stretch of open ground. The other platoons followed by slightly different routes. Lieutenant Stephen Preston was killed by machine-gun fire from the flank as he came out of the first railway cutting with the second platoon. Major Stewart Richardson, following behind, was wounded over the eye by a mortar fragment, but could still see enough to gather the platoon and return the Germans’ fire, while Lieutenant Bartlet, behind him, led his platoon slightly left down a gully. Lieutenant Brand, with the last platoon and Company H.Q., joined Major Stewart-Richardson and together they launched an attack down the railway line. It was a bloody little battle. Squads of Germans dotted along the railway, who had lain low during the night, now resisted savagely. The German mortars fired indiscriminately along the railway line. They did not seem to care whether or not they hit their own troops, but they must have done, and they certainly killed and wounded numbers of Guardsmen. The German 88-mm. guns by the cross-roads joined in firing air bursts. Through this turmoil of mixed fire, over the bodies of their friends who had been killed the night before, the Guardsmen attacked post after post, driving the Germans back before them into the waiting arms and muzzles of No. 4 Company. Slightly less than half of the two companies who had set out the previous night reached No. 4 Company that morning.


Major Gordon-Watson and Major Stewart-Richardson met under the railway bridge for a consultation. Battalion H.Q. found “the new position not much of an improvement on their old ditch.” Indeed, the whole force—the two companies and Battalion H.Q.—was now surrounded and overlooked. Tank shells from the hill were whistling right under the bridge and exploding on both sides of it, and the whole road was swept by direct machine-gun fire. Heavy 105-mm. shells fell monotonously into the sunken road, blowing in the slit trenches in the banks. Qne shell alone killed and buried a complete section.


Major Stewart-Richardson intended to lead No. 1/2 Company back to No. 4 on the west side of the railway line, the way it had come in the first night attack. He met Lieutenant Aikenhead and, with him, climbed to the top of the cutting. “There,” wrote Lieutenant Aikenhead, “we were bowled over by a shell. Stewart-Richardson was badly hit in the left arm, under the arm-pit. He could not pick himself up. I put him on his back, and he started to fight, and then stopped. I thought he was dead, but it proved to be otherwise. I dressed his wound, gave him morphia, placed him on a stretcher and covered him with blankets.”


The wounded were lifted into the carriers, the unwounded piled on board. Lieutenant John Bell and Captain Young started the engines and the overloaded -carriers drove “flat out" down the track past No. 3 Company’s old positions to reach the Scots Guards or Grenadiers by Carroceto. Just after they started, Captain Simon Combe noticed a large form lying by the roadside covered by a tarpaulin, heaving like a stranded whale. There could be only one such form on the beach-head. He jumped off the carrier. It was as he thought—Major I. Stewart-Richardson. The huge bulk was bundled on to the carrier and they started off again, rocking from side to side. The Germans made no special effort to stop the convoy; they may have fired at it, but there was already so much metal in the air that nobody would have noticed a little more.


No. 1 Company, under Captain David O’Cock, crossed the valley to “Carrier Farm.” Captain O’Cock had been second-in-command of No. 1 Company for six months in Africa and Italy, but “when I took over No. 1 Company on 5th February,” he wrote, “there were very few faces among them familiar to me. Major Rory Stewart-Richardson, the Company Commander, had been wounded. Of the platoon commanders, Da Costa was dead, shot through the head, and Grace had his legs broken. Replacements for these two had been John Vesey and Robert Aikenhead, but they were now both missing. The officers I now had were Lieutenants Charles Bartlet and Gallwey. C.S.M. Gilmore—that splendid man—had been killed so that C.Q.M.S. Smilie was made my Sergeant-Major, and Sergeant Moore imported as C.Q.M.S. There had been such heavy losses that there were only twenty-three left of the original 120 who went to make up the Company.’ (ibid)


Twice wounded and Mentioned in Despatches (London Gazette 11 January 1945), Major Stewart-Richardson relinquished his commission on account of disability and was granted rank of Honorary Major.


Cathal Torquil Hugh Stewart-Richardson, younger brother of the above, was born in 1909 and was educated at Bradfield College. Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Field Artillery on 11 September 1939, he served with them during the Second World War advancing to War Substantive Lieutenant on 1 March 1941. He was awarded the Military Cross for his services the same year during eight months under siege at Tobruk and especially subsequently while taking part in a sortie from Tobruk in support of the Royal Horse Artillery, 20 November to 12 December 1941, and was promoted to Temporary Captain on 8 March 1943.


His Military Cross was announced in the London Gazette of 9 September 1942: ‘This Officer has displayed outstanding powers of leadership and determination at all times while in command of his troop especially during the period from 20 November to 12 December while taking part in the sortie from Tobruk in support of the R.H.A. On frequent occasions while in position for action and also on the move he and his men were subjected to heavy shell fire but he always set a fine example and his coolness, personality and complete disregard for his own safety were largely responsible for maintaining the excellent morale of his troops in very trying conditions. Prior to this period he had commanded his troop for eight months in the besieged Garrison of Tobruk and at all times showed the same tenacity and devotion to duty.’


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