Grandfather's service records, 1st Bn Border regiment

Not sure about those numbers but 1 Border did re-equip in N Africa and then was sent to the Italian mainland in September where it fought until going back to UK in December.

 

Hello, my grandfather was John McCartney, OC 13 Platoon 1 Border on Ladbroke. Would you have the manifest for his glider also? I think it was Chalk 100, Thanks so much

 

John McCartney had commanded 13 Platoon at the time of Operation Ladbroke (Sicily, July 1943) but at Arnhem he commanded the Medium Machine Gun platoon of Support Company. There is a very famous photon of him standing next to Major ‘Jock’ Neill in a trench in Van Lennepweg (IWM Ref BU 1102). On the Sicily operation he was in glider, chalk 100, which came down in the sea. He made this report “Glider 100 was given the signal to cast off at about 2230. We were a long way from land. Two minutes later the pilots shouted out a hasty warning that we were going to come down in the sea, and this we did shortly afterwards. We forced our way out, the glider rapidly filling, and I then made a check of all personnel and found L/Cpl Holcroft to be missing. I caused a search to be made for him and called out his name, but got no reply. Nothing further was seen of him.” The survivors were later picked up by landing craft. The American co pilot, Flying Officer G V Capite, also perished.

 

Wonderful, thanks a lot! What is the source of this please? Is there anything you could share with me perhaps?

 

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