Victor Gregg RIP

redtop · Oct 12, 2021

From Friends of the Tenth Facebook

redtop · Oct 13, 2021

Another sad loss .

davidbfpo · Oct 17, 2021

There is a long obituary in the Guardian today, only the WW2 passages shown:

On his 18th birthday, broke and wondering what to do, Vic was approached by a Rifle Brigade recruiting sergeant. The next day he was at the regiment’s headquarters in Winchester, a rifleman. In the second world war, Vic was sent to the Western Desert. After his time with Popski he was transferred to the Long Range Desert Group, driving wounded soldiers hundreds of miles. Travelling alone in a beat-up old Bedford truck he had an uncanny knack for knowing where he was. He told me: “It was simple, you’ve got the Mediterranean to the north, the sun in the south and, at night, the Southern Cross overhead. How can you go wrong?”

Returning to his regiment in time for the attack at El Alamein, he saw a truck driven by his close friend Franky Batt blown up on a mine. Vic pulled open the lorry door and Franky’s upper body fell onto the desert, torn in half by the blast. For the next three days, Vic had to be physically prevented from commandeering a Bren gun carrier to attack the Germans and avenge his friend.

After El Alamein, Vic transferred to the Parachute Regiment and was dropped into Arnhem. He fought for 10 days until he was captured. He could never understand how he survived. He was a machine gunner and every other man assigned to the weapon was killed. “Twelve of them, Rick, I’ve got more lives than a cat.” As a prisoner of war, Vic sabotaged a soap factory and for this “crime against the Reich” was condemned to death. He was taken to Dresden and held in a huge makeshift prison with 500 other doomed men. That night the allies bombed the city. A 1,000lb bomb blew in one of the walls and a stunned Vic stumbled into the hell of the firestorm.

He was in the city for over a week. During the raid, he saw women, men and children trying to escape the flames in huge water tanks set up by the fire brigade and boiling to death; he saw others burning in molten tarmac and yet others sucked into the air with their heads on fire, their bodies exploding in the heat. Vic told me that he was used to killing, had held men in his arms as he pushed his bayonet into their stomachs, smelling their breath and staring into their dying eyes. “Nothing Rick, nothing, had prepared me for what I saw in that raid. It was a war crime,” he said.
Click to expand...

Link: El Alamein, Dresden and a cold war spy: the incredible life of Victor Gregg

davidbfpo · Nov 25, 2021

The Daily Telegraph now has an obituary (behind a pay wall alas) which has a good section on his childhood in poverty and his post-war activities, which appear to involve freelance work for the intelligence agencies in the UK and Eastern Europe.

Sapper D. · Nov 27, 2021

Good read ...........RIP !

zzkwetal · Dec 16, 2023

Interview with Victor Gregg:
Interview with Victor Gregg · IBCC Digital Archive (lincoln.ac.uk)

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Victor Gregg RIP

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