307936 (14426252) Brian Denis WILSON, Irish Guards

Personal Number: 307936
Army Number: 14426252
Rank: Second Lieutenant
Name: Brian Denis WILSON
Unit: Irish Guards


London Gazette : 11 April 1944
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/36461/supplement/1659/data.pdf
The undermentioned Cadets to be 2nd Lts. : —
28th Jan. 1944: —
I. G'ds.
307936 (14426252) Brian Denis WILSON

 

Brian Wilson, The Ever Open Eye.


Wilson, who is mentioned in Tony Brady's interview, also served with 3IG, as a platoon commander from Normandy until he was badly injured on 21st September 1944, losing part of his leg. The book covers his training at OCTU, his time with the 3rd Bn before embarkation and the campaign right through to Market Garden. Thereafter he deals with his time in hospital, his treatment and recovery, detailing such things as his amputations (twice on same leg) and fitting of prosthetic limbs, etc.

• The Guards Magazine - review by Hugh Boscawen
• Brian Wilson wrote to The Guards Magazine last Autumn to correct the account of the disastrous Sourdeval battle (11th August 1944) in the Ned Petty-Fitzmaurice article (Autumn 2015 Edition): he took part in the attack. In researching the Sourdeval piece for the Winter 2015/16 Edition, I read Wilson’s The Ever Open Eye, in which he describes his service in the Irish Guards (1943-45). The book (revised in 2014) is acutely observed, well written, and reflects both a most accomplished man and a remarkable regiment.
  The author describes his training and the D-Day build-up; he was summoned from the Reinforcement Group in Normandy to re-join 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J O E Vandeleur, on 3rd August 1944, four days into Op BLUECOAT, and experienced a significant baptism of fire in the confusing battles in close bocage North of Vire.
  
  Almost his first challenge was to lead his men in attacking over the forward slope of the Pavée-Perrier ridge (Sourdeval) with inadequate supporting fire and a predictable plan that gained temporarily only a few hundred metres beyond the Start Line at the cost of 110 Irish Guards casualties. The book contains excellent descriptions of soldiers and their reactions in the situations confronting them, leavened with measured judgements.
  
  General Montgomery’s intention to keep German armour engaged by British forces was changing when the Guards Armoured Division attacked from the Pavée-Perrier ridge: the Allies were starting to encircle German Army Group ‘B’ near Falaise. Eighteen days later, Lieutenant Wilson crossed the Seine and the Guards Armoured Division raced for Brussels, although the infantry’s prosaic role in the armoured dash was to support the tanks, mostly at night. When the armoured battalions reached central Brussels amid extraordinary jubilation, Brian Wilson’s company guarded a key road junction in the Forêt de Soignes, East of the city.
  
  After three days in Brussels, which allowed XXX Corps to move supplies forward, and the Germans to improvise defences to the North and East, the Division moved via Louvain, crossing the Albert Canal, and fought in difficult country with towns, slag heaps and woods. When the Household Cavalry found an intact bridge over the Meuse-Escaut Canal, near Neerpelt, Colonel Vandeleur executed a well-planned operation which captured it (10 September): the bridgehead provided the Start Line for Op MARKET GARDEN’s ground offensive, which started on the 17th.
  
  3rd Irish Guards moved on their 2nd Battalion’s tanks in the advance, where the XXX Corps frontage was sometimes a single road. They dealt with German stragglers and local counter-attacks, as ad hoc Kampfgruppe drove ‘for the sound of the guns’. On 20 September, four days into Op GARDEN, 2nd (Armoured) Grenadiers crossed the great bridge over the River Waal at Nijmegen, eight miles from Arnhem, and infantry moved forward to hold the bridgehead. Brian Wilson’s platoon was dug-in beyond the bridge on 21st September when he was hit, losing his right foot.
  
  The author describes his experiences in the casualty evacuation chain: after a week in Nijmegen, he was flown from Eindhoven to Brussels, and thence by Dakota to Oxford. He soon learned that it was up to him to make his way as best he could to get back on his feet, literally and metaphorically, rather than be limited by disability and self-pity. His determination was such that the officer he saw in Regimental Headquarters initially did not realise that he had lost a foot and could no longer command an infantry platoon.
  
  Finally, Brian Wilson levels criticism at the commanders and planners of MARKET GARDEN. The Operation has generated heated debate ever since, including in this Magazine, but many who took part posed enduring questions: ‘could more have been done to reach the Airborne Division’ and ‘why were there such periods of inactivity during the advance?’
  
  Officers joining the Household Division, who probably studied Sydney Jary’s excellent 18 Platoon at Sandhurst, would benefit from reading The Ever Open Eye early in their careers. Although, 72 years later, the world, the Army’s equipment and its tactics have changed, important basics remain unaltered. Brian Wilson’s descriptions of how he led his men, and others did likewise in an infantry battalion, in battle provoke thought, as do some classic low-level lessons. Moreover, officers should understand not only first aid and casualty evacuation, but also the counselling support they can, and may have to, give those injured under their command, both in the immediate aftermath of wounding, and also in the weeks that follow. I strongly recommend this book.
  
  

Excerpts of summaries in Chapters 29 & 30:

 

I met the man in 2010 and 2014. Wonderfull chap.

 

Brian Wilson, platoon commander who survived a savage assault in Normandy but was badly hit in Holland – obituary
​

Brian Wilson birdwatching in Perth, Australia, in 2000

Brian Wilson, who has died aged 99, narrowly survived an attack during the Normandy campaign which must have seemed like the realisation of a 20-year old infantry officer’s worst nightmare; despite being severely wounded in the war, he subsequently had a successful career in the Colonial Service.

In August 1944 he was a platoon commander serving with 3rd Battalion The Irish Guards (3 IG) when the battalion, commanded by Lt Col JOE “Joe” Vandeleur, was ordered to take on the tip of 11th Armoured Division’s deep salient at Sourdeval, near Vire.

At midnight on August 9 the battalion relieved the Royal Norfolks and Monmouthshires and moved into their position just below the crest of a razor-back ridge, the site of the tiny hamlet of Sourdeval.

The whole area was under constant shell and machine-gun fire from the high ground and was a graveyard of burnt-out vehicles and charred orchards. The Germans had attacked several times and caused heavy losses among the defenders. The stench of death was everywhere.

At dawn the next day, the Germans started shelling again. Early that evening they attacked the two forward companies but the Guardsmen drove them off. Reconnaissance patrols had shown that they were up against battle-hardened German paratroopers.



Wilson as a young officer in 1944
Late that night, the battalion was ordered to attack the following morning, August 11, and cut the main road from Vassy to Vire. They were to be the centre of a divisional offensive directed southwards, but the only support that they could be given was a squadron of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards’ tanks.

They attacked at 0900 hours. As they crossed the crest of the ridge, the Guardsmen came under devastating fire and the Coldstream’s tanks were destroyed one after the other by the German tanks and guns.

Ripe cornfields stretched down the slope to the stream at the bottom of the valley. Beyond the stream, the ground rose for 500 yards to the line of the main road. There was no cover. A man on this rise could see anything that moved on the slope in front of him.

“Shells and mortars crashed down,” Wilson said afterwards. “Men screamed when they were hit. The enemy could clearly observe us. A blinding orange flame rocked me backwards. I felt a stab in my chest. A mortar bomb had exploded a few feet away and left me living.” A burst of automatic fire kicked up the dust between his arm and his body, missing him by inches.

For a long hour, two companies, strung out in open order, walked steadily down the hill through cornfields swept by Spandau “enfilade” fire (along the line of soldiers). The clatter was punctuated by the thump of mortar bombs and the crack of snipers’ rifles. Snipers picked off anyone who showed any sign of commanding.



Wilson with his mother in 1946

Mortar bombs set fire to the corn but the Guardsmen kept on advancing through a swirl of smoke and flame. The wounded fell where they lay or, if they could, crawled to where the corn was still standing. Stretcher-bearers dumped their equipment and worked frantically to move the unconscious until they, too, dropped in the corn.

After four hours the attack stalled. Wilson believed himself to be the sole remaining officer with the remnants of two companies. He radioed Battalion HQ and asked for permission to withdraw. Thirty-one had been killed, including three officers, and 66 wounded. His platoon had been reduced to four men.

Brian Denis Wilson was born to Irish parents in Penang, Malaya, on June 12 1924. His father, a solicitor, was formerly an officer in the Suffolk Regiment and was badly wounded in France in the First World War. Young Brian was educated at Charterhouse, where he captained the hockey side.

He was awarded an Exhibition to read law at Brasenose College, Oxford, but went down after two terms and joined the Irish Guards in the summer of 1943. He completed his basic training at Pirbright Barracks, Surrey, before going to OCTU at Aldershot. Commissioned into the Irish Guards in January 1944, in April he was posted to 3 IG at Malton, Yorkshire.

On July 27, some seven weeks after D-Day, he embarked on a Landing Ship Infantry at Newhaven and joined 3 IG in Normandy as a platoon commander. He quickly recovered from being wounded during the battle at Sourdeval, and on one occasion had a lucky escape when talking to a brother officer as bullets from a machine gun passed between them.



Wilson, centre, in Hong Kong in 1951

After the break-out from Normandy, the battalion made a rapid advance eastwards; Wilson recalled encountering drunken French “Résistants” who tried to grab the insignia on his uniform for souvenirs. Following the liberation of Brussels, on September 10 the Irish Guards Group captured Joe’s Bridge, a strategically important crossing point over the Bocholt-Herentals Canal at Lommel in northern Belgium.

Wilson always maintained that the Guards Armoured Division should not have halted their rapid advance for six days but should have pushed on to the Arnhem road bridge and provided vital support to the airborne troops in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden.

On September 21, during heavy shelling, Wilson’s right foot was blown off. He managed to hop into a slit trench and give himself a shot of morphia. While he was being put on a stretcher, two more shells landed nearby. At the advance dressing station, a bustling room full of trestle tables and orderlies, he was still in great pain. A doctor gave him a shot of Pentothal and he passed out.

After a move to an American airborne hospital and then a British casualty clearing station, he was flown to Brussels and then to England. He was at Leamington Spa Hospital for eight months before a further move to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton. His leg was badly infected and had to be re-amputated six inches below the knee. Three months after leaving the hospital, he was fitted with a prosthetic leg.

Wilson was released from the Army in November 1945. In December 1948, he joined the Colonial Administrative Service (later re-named Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service) and was posted to Hong Kong as a cadet officer. He was promoted through various ministries starting as District Officer (DO) in the New Territories, and alternated between the departments of Home Affairs, Resettlement, and Defence.



Wilson receiving his CBE from the Governor of Hong Kong, Murray MacLehose, later Lord MacLehose of Beoch

In 1971, having become Commissioner for Transport, he pressed for restricting licences for private cars and advocated further measures to reduce future traffic congestion.

On one hot weekend, he was stripped to the waist and gardening outside his DO’s married quarters when a van drew up. The man in the back was hammering and banging on the sides and Wilson was required to sign a warrant for his committal for observation in a mental hospital. Unfortunately, he signed the form in the wrong place and he received a directive from the psychiatric specialist, a man with a distinct sense of humour, informing him that he had committed himself and that a room was being prepared for him.

Wilson was Director Urban Services from 1975 until 1983, when he retired. He was appointed CBE in 1977 and to the Légion d’honneur in 2002. He much enjoyed his term as chair of the Antiquities Advisory Committee, and during his tenure several important sites were preserved. He was held in great respect and affection by all who worked with him.

In retirement, he lived in Perth, Western Australia, and enjoyed birdwatching and conservation, gardening, and supporting opera and ballet. After his wife’s death in 1991 he began to travel widely and went on more than 40 birdwatching tours in remote parts of the world.

He published The Trodden Way (2005), an account of his childhood and his life in Hong Kong, as well as The Ever Open Eye (2014), an account of his experiences in Normandy, and The Beating Heart, a collection of postwar poems.

Brian Wilson married, in 1948, Margaret Phillips. Their son died of motor neurone disease in 2006 and he is survived by his two daughters.

Brian Wilson, born June 12 1924, died May 22 2024

Brian Wilson, platoon commander who survived a savage assault in Normandy but was badly hit in Holland – obituary (msn.com)

 

Thanks for sharing!
Anybody have an idea where I can get a copy of Ever Open Eye? I've been to the usual and slightly unusual places and it looks like a pricey trip to British Museum is the only option.

 

Do you want the actual book or just something checked?
It's c. 190 pages, 31 Chapters, no index...

 

Wapen,

Also @ IWM: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500035209

ISBN: ISBN-10. 1858215323

The publisher ceased trading in 2001.

 

Lovely! Thank you. Full reply shortly. (FAT FINGER DAY)

 

Aha! I really want the whole thing in my hand smelling lovely but would pay for digital photos if you have time and willpower. A polite refusal will not offend. DM chat?

 

DM sent. This did stir me to wonder: Does anyone here offer a visit and copy service to the IWM?