Roy’s Boys COMPLETING A TRIOLOGY
Christopher Jary remembers three British battalions: the Devons, Hampshires and Dorsets in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. His latest book Roy’s Boys, nicknamed after Brigadier Roy Urquhart DSO, draws on the testimony of scores of veterans.
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n 2nd March, in Auckland, New Zealand, the Dorset Regiment’s most distinguished veteran of the Second World War will celebrate his 100th birthday. Having enlisted as a boy soldier in 1936 and served in India before the war, Denis Bounsall fought throughout the Siege of Malta. His Brigade then led the Allied landings in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. Miraculously, Denis survived the threemonth campaign in Normandy, the advance through Belgium and the battle around Arnhem before the Brigade was finally rested and returned to England. Denis led a charmed life which, in the course of his duties as a stretcher-bearer, he risked countless times in battle after bloody battle. And now, on the day he makes his century, he will receive a birthday present from Dorset that commemorates and celebrates his exceptional career as a soldier. He does not know it yet but he will receive the first copy of a book concerning the invasion of Sicily in 1943 by the three West country battalions that made up 231 Brigade – otherwise known as the Malta Brigade and included the 1st Dorsets, the 1st Hampshires and the 2nd Devons. Their story began on Malta, when the three battalions first came together. Churchill had seen the potential of Malta, which he called “the unsinkable aircraft carrier”, to sink enemy shipping crossing the Mediterranean to supply Italian and German troops in North Africa. Hitler ordered that Malta should be “neutralised”. For the tiny garrison and defenceless population, this meant blockade, starvation and the heaviest bombing in history. Denis and his friends spent 34 months dodging the bombs, enduring starvation, defending the airfields, ports and coastline,
repairing the runways and preparing for imminent invasion. It never came. Impressed by the Malta Brigade, Monty recruited them to his 8th Army and sent them to Egypt, under the command of Brigadier Roy Urquhart (who later won fame at Arnhem), to train to lead the invasion of Sicily. The first day of that invasion saw the greatest amphibious landing the world has ever seen—it surpassed that of D-Day! First ashore of the brigade were C Company of the 1st Dorsets, led by Captain Charles Martin from Rampisham. At first they met unenthusiastic Italian home defence troops but soon they encountered Germans in the shape of the Herman Goering Division and their war changed dramatically. The Germans fought a fierce rear-guard action across the island, defending every possible hill. They fought with skill and tenacity in terrain which strongly favoured the defender. For the men of the Brigade, Sicily was a succession of tiring advances through choking white dust kicked up by the vehicles and marching men under the blazing Sicilian August sun. The capture of hill towns on their way—Vizzini, Agira and Regalbuto in the shadow of Mount Etna— cost casualties heavier than those suffered by the infantry at Kohima and not far short of those suffered later in Normandy. In one of his first battles 22-year-old Denis Bounsall worked out in the open on an exposed road under heavy shell, mortar and machine gun fire, rescuing and tending wounded soldiers. A couple of days later he single-handedly carried another wounded man back from a patrol, evading German soldiers to bring him back to safety. In recognition of these feats he
