Page 222 - The Bugle 2018

he commanded 3 Green Jackets, The Rifle Brigade in Borneo alongside an old school friend, Dwin Bramall who was commanding 2nd Green Jackets. Known for his outspoken manner and dry sense of humour Mark named the Battalion’s pet honey bear, Pongo, after a favourite uncle. He allowed his able company commanders to get on with the business of deterring Indonesian incursions and was immensely proud to have been the last Rifle Brigade CO before it merged with its sister regiments to create the Royal Green Jackets. At the end of the tour he was mentioned in dispatches.
Command of 12th Infantry Brigade in Germany was followed in 1970 by a return to the Far East as Deputy Commander Land Forces Hong Kong. His final postings were to the Ministry of Defence as Director of Operations and Plans and then as Assistant Chief of Defence Staff. He retired from the Army in 1972.
On leaving the Army he returned to Dorset to live a very active retirement in Moigne Combe where he restored the woodlands. He was a JP, County Councillor, Chairman of the Dorset Police Authority, Deputy and Vice Lord Lieutenant, Chair of Governors and Visitor of Milton Abbey School and involved with many other local and national organisations.
He never married and his only sibling, Elizabeth, predeceased him.
Mark Bond died peacefully in Dorset on 27th March 2017, aged 94.
Lieutenant John Wood MC The Rifle Brigade. John Kember Wood was born on 8th August 1922 in Hong Kong the only child of the Deputy Chief Justice of Hong Kong, Rosskruge Wood, and his wife, Frances. Educated at Shrewsbury School, he joined the Rifle Brigade OCTU in August 1941, just after his 19th birthday, and was commissioned, with 18 brother RB officers, coming top of his intake. His wartime service started in North Africa, including an adventure carrying gold bullion from Beirut to Aleppo for the Treasury, and continued in Italy adjusting from the desert sands to the very different terrain of Italy. It was hard soldiering in the mountains with
hot summers and a bitter winter.
On 6 July 44 during operations on Monte Lignano his platoon
was held up by intense and accurate shell fire and casualties were incurred. He disregarded his personal safety and dressed the wounds of those injured in the open under continuous shell fire. Throughout the day his coolness and cheerfulness in unpleasant circumstances were an encouragement and example to all near him. Again on 24 July during operations in the Terranuova area, he showed great initiative over a period of 48 hrs in establishing OPs and carrying out daring patrols into the enemy lines, bringing back valuable information which affected operations over the whole Brigade front. At all times, his initiative, and untiring efforts set a fine example to the members of his platoon.
Later, near Tossignano, Wood was taken prisoner, having been one of two officers isolated after 2 RB’s brave but unsuccessful bid to capture the hilltop town, near Bologna, from the recently reinforced defenders, the veteran German 305th Inf Div. They had to make the difficult decision to surrender when the house in which they were based was blown up. He always acknowledged that the Germans helped them to dig out their wounded comrades. He spent several very cold and hungry months as a POW in Stalag VII at Moosburg in southern Bavaria after which he couldn’t stand root vegetables for the rest of his life. British POWs in Moosburg were advised, over their clandestine wireless located in the communal latrines, that they were not to attempt to escape as the war was nearly over and the camp was due to be liberated shortly.
After the War he went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge where he took a two-year shortened law course and was called to the Bar in 1949. After taking silk in 1969, he made his particular mark in leading cases in negligence and damages as well as family law. He was appointed to the Family Division of the High Court in 1977, and was later appointed President of the Employment Tribunal.
He is survived by his wife, Ann, their son Nicholas, a Lloyds insurance broker, and daughter Venetia Howes who became the first female master of the Worshipful Company of Marketors.
Lieutenant Nicholas Mosley MC The Rifle Brigade and night, three or four counter attacks did come in from the further
London Irish Rifles. Nicholas Mosley, the writer, 7th Baronet and 3rd Lord Ravensdale, who died on 28th Feb 2017 aged 93 was the eldest son by the first marriage of his father Sir Oswald Mosley a onetime Labour MP and the founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists in 1932. He spent his life coming to terms with the malign legacies left to him by his father.
He was born in London on the 25th of June 1923. His mother was Cynthia, daughter of Lord Curzon, statesman and one time Viceroy of India. He had a fractured childhood and was brought up in the main by his nanny. At an early age he developed a life long stammer and although treatment by Lionel Logue (‘The King’s Speech’) it had little effect on his speech impediment.
Educated at Eton, which he remembered as so sophisticated that even when his father was interned in Holloway prison “none of my friends turned a hair”. In April 1942 he went to the Rifle Depot in Winchester for 3 months basic training before going to the Greenjackets OCTU in Fulford Bks York and was commis- sioned, with 28 other RB cadets, into The Rifle Brigade on 19th Dec 1942. When he arrived at the OCTU he gave his name to the adjutant who, without looking up, asked: “Not any relation to that bastard, are you?” Mosley replied: “Yes, actually.” “My dear fellow,” the adjutant spluttered, “I’m so frightfully sorry.” The decency of the comment made Mosley feel even more patriotic
He was a Platoon Commander with 2 RB in North Africa and Italy before he was seconded to the 2nd Battalion of the London Irish Rifles in Dec 1943 with whom he was slightly wounded near Cassino on 16th May 1944 and briefly taken prisoner. In October 1944 he was awarded a MC for his part in the storming of a fortified farmhouse at Casa Spinello, north of Florence. He later described the hours that his platoon spent at there. “During the
hills but, by this time, we were experiencing a strange exhila- ration. We felt invulnerable, heroic; when we heard Germans approaching, we opened fire with all our weapons from every opening in all directions. I remember one man, who had lost his spectacles and could find no room at a window, firing his rifles repeatedly straight up in the air.
We yelled and whooped our war cry – ‘Woo-hoo Mahommet!; – and blazed away until the attacks seemed to fade into the thin night air. It was all quite like, yes, an apotheosis of a mad apocalyptic children’s game. Only once, I think, did a German get right up to the wall of the house; he shot one of our men point blank through a window. Grenades usually bounced off the walls and exploded outside. After a time, things quietened down. Our wireless was not working so; at least we were out of touch with headquarters so they could not order us to do anything different.”
After the war he read PPE at Balliol, Oxford although he did not complete the course. He was regarded as the “author of ambitious novels”. He wrote in excess of 25 fiction and non-fiction books and two volumes about his father. His half-brother is Max Mosley the Formula 1 supremo.
Nicholas Mosley was twice married and was the father of five children.
IT WAS ALL QUITE LIKE, YES,
AN APOTHEOSIS OF A MAD APOCALYPTIC CHILDREN’S GAME
228 REGIMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS
THE RIFLES