Two veterans of 92nd (Loyals) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, Len Harvey and George Baker, died last week. Both were Gunners with the regiment’s F Troop, 318 Battery, which landed on Sword Beach on D-Day and went on to defend the Pegasus and Horsa bridges at Benouville and Ranville. Len, aged 90, was born in Limehouse, East London. George, 93, was a Liverpudlian. Both volunteered for the Army when they came of age and served through until 1947. George also served in Palestine. Len was a close comrade of my late father, serving on the same gun. When my father was wounded in a mortar attack on Horsa Bridge on June 10, 1944, Len helped get him to safety and called medical aid. Len and George were comrades of Jim Holder-Vale (Driver-Op on WW2 Talk), who also landed with F Troop on D-Day. I got to know Len and George well through compiling a history of 92nd LAA. They were the finest examples of their generation - modest and reticent about their war service, good-humoured, kind and thoughtful. It was a privilege to have known them. May they rest in peace. Pictured: Len Harvey and George Baker, wartime photographs. Jim, Len and George at the Royal Artillery memorial, Sword Beach, June 6, 2008.
You might be please to know that F Troop 92 LAA got a mention in the guide I put together for the RA soldiers visiting the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of D Day. http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=892
Sadly, sapper Tom Carpenter (9 Field Company RE), who saw action at the railway bridge at Oosterbeek and the Rhine Bridge in Arnhem, died 1 May. I will miss him.
