Page 226 - The Bugle 2018

Cpl Henry J Harris (5384180). Enlisted into 4th Bn Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 31st January 1939. Too young to go out with the BEF he served for the duration of WW2. Long term stalwart of the 43rd & 52nd Old Comrades Association and RGJA Oxford Branch. Died 14 April 2018 aged 95.
Lt Richard Hume-Rothery (470864) Late 1GJ (43rd and 52nd) and RUR. Richard died suddenly in Bequia on 18th February 2018. Aged 72. Beloved husband of Carrie, whom he married in 1968, father of Jojo, Toby and Jocelyn and grandfather of Sebastian, Florence, Willoughby, Alexia, Oliver and Petra.
Richard was a short service
commission officer from 14 April 1962 to
16 November 1964 serving with the 1st
Green Jackets (43rd&52nd). During the
Brunei Revolt in December 1962 he was
in Letter C Company, commanded by Major Mark Pennell, and was involved in the operation to retake Bekenu, in Sarawak. C Company were ordered to go to the village of Niah on the Sibuti river where rebels were said to be active. They arrived in Niah to find everything was peaceful, but the locals who were loyal, were dressed for headhunting. A practice that the colonial government had banned, this had worked and any rebels had vanished. Richard’s Platoon, 6 Platoon, then embarked in a launch and moved up the river towards Bekenu. Letter B company under Major David Mostyn had marched all night through the Jungle to do a dawn attack on Bekenu; 6 Platoon’s task was to stop any rebels escaping down river. The action was successful.
On returning to Penang Richard in April 1963was transferred to Letter B Company commanded by Major David Mostyn, with whom he went back to Borneo in August of that year. Shortly afterwards Richard arrested two TNKU members in Long Akah. In November 1964 he then returned home to the UK.
Subsequently he served as a TA officer with the Royal Ulster Rifles before resigning his commission in 1967. After leaving
Northern Ireland Richard worked for Courtaulds then as a personnel officer with The Anglo American Group spending about one year in Milan followed by a time in Kuala Lumpur in 1973. From 1974 Richard and Carrie were in Kimberley, South Africa, with De Beers for three and a half years. On returning home in 1978 he worked for European conditions abroad and formed his own company, the European Study Group. Richard was very involved with the EU and in 1999 was Vice-Chairman and Secretary of the European Works Council Study Group, UK.
He became very involved with the Conservative Party in his local constituency at Witney, for which Mr Cameron was the Member. He also was involved in the selection of Mr Cameron’s successor, Robert Courts MP.
In recent years Richard had become an active member of the Rifles Officers’ Oxford Club and the Oxf & Bucks Residual Affairs Committee. Richard Hume-Rothery played a very large part in the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum (SOFO) in Woodstock. He was a Member and Friend of the museum which first opened its doors in 2014. He was heavily involved in, and successful at, fundraising for the museum which though it contains the archives of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and the Queens Own Oxfordshire Hussars, receives no official financial assistance from Government sources. Richard hosted and intro- duced several high profile visitors. It is to a certain extent due to his hard work that SOFO has prospered.
Robert Drummond-Hay
THE LOCALS WHO WERE LOYAL, WERE DRESSED FOR HEADHUNTING
Pte Cecil Jeffcoate (5392030). Cecil joined up in Nuneaton on 11 September 1941 and was persuaded to join the Infantry. The recruiting sergeant read out
a list of regiments, one being the Oxf & Bucks Light Infantry which sounded ‘good’! The rest, as they say, is history. The 2nd Bn of the Oxf & Bucks, known as the 52nd, became part of the 6th Airborne Division and Cecil was posted to S Company to be trained as No1 on a Vickers Machine Gun; this seemed fitting as his Uncle Ernie had served with the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War.
Cecil took part in D-Day, landing in Normandy as part of a large glider borne force to secure the eastern flank of the invasion area. He was in ‘D’ Company under command of Major John Howard and consequently in the Coup de Main party which famously captured the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne just after midnight on 6 June 1944. Cecil subsequently saw action in the fierce fighting in the villages of Escoville, Herouvillette and at Chateau-St-Come; in the Winter of 1944 in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge and at the crossing of the Rhine with the glider landings of Operation Varsity in March 1945, by which time Cecil had become a sniper. The 52nd had fought their way
to the Baltic by VE Day in May 1945. Later posted with them to Palestine, Cecil was demobbed on 27 December 1946.
Cecil was extremely modest, the last to consider himself a hero and claimed to be ‘rather’ lucky. He would often say that he felt his Uncle Joe, who survived the Battle of the Somme but died later in WWI was looking after him. He quoted just one example; when tasked to protect a flank with his machine gun the Germans would invariably attack the other side. However, he had many close calls – at Chateau-St-Come by mortar fire, the Ardennes by a mine explosion, and on the Rhine landings when he was thrown through the nose of the glider on crash landing.
Cecil had a long and full life outside the service. A committed and kindly family man, he loved springer spaniels, walking the great outdoors, holidays spent on the Norfolk Broads and fishing. A man of boundless energy he rescued a drowning lady in 2003, aged 80, for which deed he received a Braveheart hero award.
In retirement he reconnected with his service life and became active with veteran groups including the British Legion. He carried the Coventry Airborne standard for many years, the last time when marching proudly across Pegasus Bridge with it as a sprightly 93 year old. He was fiercely proud of representing the men of his regiment, especially those that were lost.
To quote Penny Bates, daughter of John Howard: “We will carry him across Pegasus Bridge once more this year – in our hearts”
Cecil died on Christmas Day 2017 aged 95.
232 REGIMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS
THE RIFLES