Capt. PPF Compton, 41466, East Surrey Regiment

Discussion in 'Searching for Someone & Military Genealogy' started by Julian Mcsweeney, Nov 13, 2018.

  1. Does anyone have information on the 2/6th Bt. East Surrey Regt for 1939-42, or could help point me in the right direction? My grandfather, Capt. PPF Compton (41466) served with the 2/6th Bt. East Surrey Regt. and was killed in February, 1942. He had originally joined up with the Territorial unit in 1939, due to pressure from his family who wanted him to remain at home to run the family business (J. Compton Webb and Sons, Ltd). Unfortunately, my own family's anacdotes of my grandfather are few and far between - the trauma of losing two sons in six months meant that it became an almost taboo subject in our famliy and my mother still cannot bring herself to discuss her father's death - given that he was killed just six months after his younger brother John, a Flight Lieutenant in 36 Squadron RAF, who was shot down and killed in Malaysia in 1941. From piecing together what little I know of the regimental history and from what I know of when and where he served and died, I have some basic details but not much more, and would greatly appreciate it if there's anyone out there with more detailed information regarding the events leading up to his escape from St. Valery/Dunkirk and subsequent death in the middle east in February, 1942.
    As far as I'm aware, having been sent to France as part of the BEF in either late 1939 or early 1940, his battalion were designated as a communications unit and were sacrificed alongside the 51st Highland Division, with whom they fought the rearguard action at St. Valery-en-Caux. While 95% of his battalion were either capture or killed, Capt. Compton was evacuated back to England after being wounded by shrapnel early on in the action. After a brief spell back in Britian he was then sent back to Egypt, and was eventually killed on the Beirut to Damascus road fighting against the Vichy French in '42. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated at the Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial (panel 11, Column 2.) Any information regarding these periods would be greatly appreciated.
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Tony56

    Tony56 Member Patron

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  3. Thanks for the link. I've already read this but am quite confused as there seems to be little continuity in referencing the original TA battalions. I'm not sure exactly which unit my grandfather served in after Dunkirk, but it wouldn't have been the 2/6th East Surreys as they were kept in England. I do know he fought in N.Africa and the Middle East as a Desert Rat, but unsure of the name of his unit.
     
  4. Tony56

    Tony56 Member Patron

    The casualty lists states that he died at 'Home' ie not in an overseas theatre. His death is registered in Chatham, Kent. What information have you for him being killed on the "Beirut to Damascus Road"?

    As per the normal advice for researching a soldier I would recommend that you obtain his service records which should reveal all.
    Get a copy of military service records
     
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  5. minden1759

    minden1759 Senior Member

    Compton & Webb made my beret.

    Great stuff.

    Frank
     
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  6. Tony56

    Tony56 Member Patron

    Been thinking! My post #4 above, if he died at 'Home' and his death was registered in the UK, why is he is commemorated on a panel at Brookwood and presumably therefore no grave? Wonder, do you have a death certificate?
     
  7. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    UK, Army Roll of Honour, 1939-1945
    Name: Peter Compton
    Given Initials: P P F
    Rank: Captain
    Death Date: 5 Feb 1942
    Number: 41466
    Birth Place: Surrey
    Residence: Surrey
    Regiment at Enlistment: East Surrey Regiment
    Branch at Enlistment: Infantry
    Theatre of War: United Kingdom
    Regiment at Death: East Surrey Regiment

    Branch at Death: Infantry

    UK and Ireland, Find A Grave Index, 1300s-Current
    Name: Capt Peter Percival Flower Compton
    Death Date: 5 Feb 1942
    Cemetery: Brookwood Military Cemetery
    Burial or Cremation Place: Brookwood, Woking Borough, Surrey, England
    Has Bio?: Y
    URL: https://www.findagrave.com/mem...

    England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966, 1973-1995
    Name: Peter Percival Flower Compton
    Death Date: 5 Feb 1942
    Death Place: Buckinghamshire, Buckingham, England
    Probate Date: 9 Sep 1942
    Registry: Llandudno
    32858_636672_2149-00130.jpg

    My guess and thats all it is, is that he died in the UK during an exercise, bomb disposal incident, bombing incident or some such in that there was an exploion and his body could not be recovered.

    TD
     
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  8. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    How do you know this?

    TD
     
  9. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Moved the posts on Capt Compton to a new thread .
     
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  10. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Brookwood Memorial panel from my photo collection.

    A point to note:
    Listed on the Brookwood memorial because body not found.
    Or
    As happened many times death was in the UK and family made their own arrangements for a burial within the UK.The paperwork due to the mist of war was lost hence CWGC have him on the Brookwood memorial see link here Brookwood Memorial for further detail.

    upload_2018-11-13_23-27-28.png

    Captain COMPTON, PETER PERCIVAL FLOWER
    Service Number 41466

    Died 05/02/1942

    2/6th Bn.
    East Surrey Regiment
    Casualty
    Cemetery/memorial reference: Panel 11. Column 2.
     
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  11. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    2/6 East Surreys got a hiding at a place called Aumale around the 7thJune 1940. I've been walking their battlefields for the last three years. After the France and Flanders Campaign the 2/6th never deployed overseas again as a battalion.

    Here's a nominal roll of officers with the battalion in June and he's not listed with them. I would get a copy of his service records to confirm what unit(s) he was with.
    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Thanks for your replies and information. My original guess was that he must've been wounded sometime between 9 - 11th June, though how or from where he was evacuated is still a mystery. Clearly he is not present on the roll of the 2nd June, 1940. He would've been a Lieutenant then as he is listed as being promoted to the rank of Captain in 1941. I don't know exactly where I got the belief that he fought alongside the Highlanders and was injured at the time. It may be anecdotal or something I read. I do know for a fact that he was wounded and I do know he was evacuated and recovered from his wounds. But under what circumstances and when exactly is still a mystery. From the evidence of the 2nd June roll, he may already have been injured by that time. The biggest anomaly is that he is listed as having died in Chatham in 1942, though there is no burial place for him. And if they had his body surely he wouldv'e had a burial place. The suggestion that he might've been buried elsewhere by his family doesn't add up either, as I'm certain my grandmother or mother would've known if that was the case. I suppose the theory that he might've been killed on exercise while in the UK is certainly possible, but the gap between his evacuation as a wounded officer and his death in February, 1942 seems quite long. Again, I have no actual records for him taking part in the campaigns in N.Africa and the Middle East, other than anecdotal or circumstantial evidence.
     
  13. I guess the other thing that doesnt add up is the fact that he was promoted to Captain in 1941, which would surely have meant he was fit for active service by then.
     
  14. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    His service records should help unravel the mystery - like Xmas we need to wait and see

    TD
     
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  15. Drew, thanks for your replies and excellent information. I guess the other thing that doesnt add up is the fact that he was promoted to Captain in 1941, which would surely have meant he was fit for active service by then. Obviously he didn't go back to fight with the 2/6th ESR, so I guessed he must've been transferred to another battalion or unit? My assumption that he fought against the Vichy French and was killed on the Beirut to Damascus road is again based purely on either anecdotal or circumstantial evidence. If he was critically injured during that campaign he might well have been repatriated a second time, though that still doesn't answer the question as to why there is no burial place. As far as I'm aware there was never any funeral service held for him and no body to bury. Could the entry for the place of his death simply been a mistake?
     
  16. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    Officers uniforms & equipment

    I see you have posted a family business history on that site - interesting

    Posted 16 March , 2015
    My great-grandfather was John Compton, who founded J. Compton & Sons. He started his business after travelling out to the Crimea to make tunics, coats and hats for the British Army officers serving there. The first factory was in Swindon, where J. Compton's were one of the biggest employers of women. In 1922 they became J. Compton. Sons & Webb, setting up a factory in Ford Rd, Hackney, which employed over 5,000 people. John Compton's two eldest sons were killed during WWII (my grandfather, Capt. PPF Compton, East Surrey Regt., who died on the Beirut to Damascus road in 1941, having survived the rearguard action at St. Valery/Dunkirk, where he fought alongside the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was injured, becoming one of the last BEF officers to be evacuated back to Britain; and his brother Paul, an aviator who was killed in Malaya). After my grandfather's death, and as part of a settlement, my grandmother received company shares, which she later inexplicably sold. The selling of those shares outside of the family allowed Coates Viyella to take a controlling stake. Coates Viyella were then bought out by St. Dupont and they in turn were taken over by Courtaulds, who eventually sold off many of the smaller businesses within the original Coates Viyella portfolio.
    Fast forward 30 years and my younger brother and I began making enquiries about buying back the family business. We discovered the company had offices in Worcester but didn't appear to be trading. Having made contact with the parent company and enquired about the possibility of buying back the company we received no response at all. A year or so after our initial enquiries we decided to make another attempt at contacting the owner. At that point we discovered that the company had been dissolved. We therefore decided to reregister J.Compton Sons & Webb and are now working to reestablish the business in the East End of London, as a retailer of British-made, traditional fine quality military jackets and coats. Since reregistering the company we have reconnected with one of the original suppliers of our cloth (who have been providing military textiles since the Napoleonic wars), and are now looking to acquire the original cutting pattern books on which our products will be based. Furthermore, we are interested in buying back old J. Compton Sons & Webb products for our archives and collection, so if you own any of our old jackets or coats and would be willing to sell, my brother and I would be delighted to hear from you.



    TD
     
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  17. Yes TD, though some of the info I posted then was obviously wrong - I got my great-uncle's name wrong for a start (it was John Compton who was killed in Malaysia, not Paul, who was the only one of my great-grandfather's sons to survive WW2.) My information comes from recollections of conversations with family members, though much of it doesn't really add up. I think this is due to a rift in our family which happened after my grandfather's death. My grandmother, who was a Surrey squire-farmer's daughter, married into a very wealthy family and when her husband died she was given an allowance and shares in the family business, which she then sold outside the family. This caused a great deal of bad blood between her and her husband's family. The rift lasted many years and their children and grandchildren were largely estranged from his family until only around 20 years ago. This situation repeated itself with my own mother and father's family after my father died when I was just 11 years old. I think it may have something to do with the fact that in both cases the husbands and wives came from totally different social backgrounds and there was some snobbery involved. I was estranged from my own father's family for many years after he died, and have only recently come to learn about their history - which is colourful, to put it mildly. All of the men on both sides of my family, up until my own generation, served and fought in either the army, RN or RAF. My paternal grandfather, Albert Edward McSweeney, who was born in 1899, had lied about his age so he could join up and fight alongside his older brother and father, who both served in the Royal Field Artillery during WWI. My grandfather went into the Machine Gun Corps and was shot and gassed at the Battle of the Somme when he was just 16 years old. He recovered and took part in the Galliopli landings. Both his father William and brother Fred were invalided out in 1915. My father's older brother served in the RN and took part in the Dieppe Raid, during which every one of the French Canadians he took ashore was either killed or captured. He also took part in the D-Day landings and was told to shoot any man who refused to disembark. Other uncles served in Korea in either the Royal Army Ordinance Corps or the Royal Sussex Regt. and one was in the RAF. My own father served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, though this was during peacetime. Most of the anecdotes I have from WW2 come from my grandmother, who was a 'Mayfair Moll', driving VIPs around London during the war. She described pushing ARPs out of the way as she forced her way into the ruins of the family home in Knightsbridge, which had been bombed, so she could retrieve her jewellery from the Anderson shelter in the garden. She remarried shortly after the war ended, to a retired RAF Group Captain from Tangmere, who had orignally fought in WWI as a pilot officer, flying Sopwith Camels in the Middle East, where he was shot through both legs from groundfire. He remained in the Middle East during the interwar years and we believe he was involved with Military intelligence, as after WW2 he went to work for the Eagle Star Reinsurance Company on Blackfriars bridge, which was set up to provide 'jobs for the boys'. Perhaps my grandmother's reluctance to discuss the circumstances of her husband's death was out of deference towards her new husband, who was the closest thing I had to a grandfather when I was growing up.
     
  18. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    Sounds like you need to write a book or a film script - now just need to see his service records and take it from there, patience is a virtue or so they say

    TD
     
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  19. Perhaps this list only includes those officers fit for active duty and doesn't reference those wounded, as he is definitely listed as having served in the 2/6th Btn. That would mean he was wounded before the date of this roll. The reason he joined a Territorial unit was because his parents were opposed to him going into the regular army because they wanted him to run the family business.
     
  20. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    4th May 1940. The Battalion went to France in April 1940 so it's unlikely he was there with this unit.
    [​IMG]
     
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