Page 194 - Bugle Autumn 2014

MORRIS Harold William Morris of 141 St. Giles Road, Birmingham died on 7th December 2013 aged ninety-six.
He enlisted in the DCLI in 1934 and was posted to the 1st Battalion then stationed in the mountains of northern India at Razmak. The Battalion subsequently moved to Dinapore, (with detachments guarding the prison on the Andaman Islands), Muzzafarpur and Lahore.
In December 1941 the Battalion sailed for Iraq where they came under command of 21st (Indian) Brigade, guarding the Hindiya Barrage. Then, in May 1942, they were given the terse order to move at immediate notice by desert route to Egypt. Up to a few months before, the Battalion transport had been entirely reliant on mules, and as a result there were few trained motor vehicle drivers. No RASC drivers were available, so it was a remarkable accomplishment on behalf of the Battalion to motor
2,000 miles across some of the most inhospitable deserts. The trek ended, not in Egypt but 400 miles further west in the Gazala Line west of Tobruk. There, at Bir-el-Harmat on 5th/6th June 1942, they were surrounded and virtually annihilated. Morris was taken prisoner, spending the next three years in PoW camps in Italy and Germany.
After demob in 1946, he was employed by Birmingham City Council as an electrical engineer. The same year he married Matilda Clare Barclay; they had two children, Laura and Rebecca to whom we extend our sympathy. On retirement Morris
spent much time watching the Warwickshire Cricket Club and supporting Aston Villa. He kept in touch with his old DCLI comrades and regularly attended reunions, both in Birmingham and Shrewsbury.
STERICKER Captain Peter Stericker TD of Homecroft, Old
Mill Road, Torquay, died on 15th December 2013 at the age
of ninety-six. Educated at Wellington College, he spent the
early years of his career working for the Indian Civil Service in Calcutta. At that time he held a commission in that remarkable regiment, the Calcutta Light Horse - more a gentleman’s club than a serious fighting unit. On the outbreak of war in 1939, Stericker volunteered to transfer to the Gurkha Rifles. Sent to the OCTU at Belgaum, he met Tom Sault of the DCLI with whom he became a close friend. Sault persuaded him that the DCLI was a far better choice, and as a result he was commissioned into that Regiment.
Stericker joined the 1st Battalion at Lahore as Regimental Signals Officer. They moved in December 1941 – first to Iraq, guarding the Hindiya Barrage; then in May 1942 the Battalion
carried out the remarkable 2,000 mile drive through deserts to the Gazala Line west of Tobruk in Libya. There, at the battle of Bir -el- Harmat on 5th/6th June 1942, the Battalion was virtually annihilated by Rommel’s panzer offensive. Stericker was one of those who survived as a PoW. Imprisoned in Italy, he escaped when the Italian army surrendered and joined guerrilla troops
in the Apennines together with a brother DCLI officer, Peter Watson.
Captured again, he was moved to a PoW camp in Germany where he remained for the rest of the war.
After the war, Stericker served with the 4th/5th DCLI (TA) and then as ADC to the GOC Western Command in Chester.
He married twice, first to Pamela Holton, who died in 1971, and secondly to Patricia Reeves. He had three
children by his first wife – Elizabeth, Louise and Charles.
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Who was Sapper Brown?
Remembering British Military Burials in Cyprus
Written by Colonel David Vassallo L/RAMC
Printed by Crest Publications, limited-edition soft-back copies available from the Army Medical Services Museum, Royal Engineers Museum, and The Hive, RAF Akrotiri, BFPO 57.
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192 REGIMENTAL ASSOCIATION NEWS THE RIFLES