Rifle Brigade officer who took part in Operation Goodwood — where he learnt important lessons from a shrewd German adversary
David Stileman would ruefully explain to Staff College students attending the Normandy battlefield tour that he had survived the Second World War because of shrewdly withheld enemy fire. It was the morning of Operation Goodwood on June 18, 1944, that the commanding officer of 8th Battalion The Rifle Brigade ordered him to take his motor platoon — mounted in lightly armoured half-tracks — to check whether there were any enemy in the hamlet of Hubert-Folie.
The approaches were wide open, giving any German anti-tank guns concealed there a turkey-shoot opportunity into the flank of 11th Armoured Brigade as it advanced southwards. The place had to be cleared and it was the infantry’s job to clear it. Stileman led his half-tracks hell for leather down the little main street without a shot being fired. Assuming the hamlet cleared, 8th Rifle Brigade pressed on but the enemy were there, and in other hamlets and patches of cover to the flank of three British armoured divisions advancing side by side.
The German 88mm guns, including those of an anti-aircraft battery that the local commander, Colonel Hans von Luck, ordered to lower its gun muzzles to engage the British armour, opened fire. More than 300 British tanks were lost or severely damaged that day. Montgomery did not intend Goodwood to be an attempt to break out from the east of the Normandy bridgehead but — in accordance with his strategic plan — to draw the enemy armour there to give the 1st (US) Army a clear run to break out on the west. It had that effect, even though it proved a costly enterprise.
Although Stileman survived that day, two weeks later he was shot in the head by a sniper, the bullet exiting through his neck. After eight operations he returned to duty before the end of the northwest Europe campaign. For many years after the war he and Colonel Hans-Ulrich von Luck und Witten, to give him his full styling, appeared on the Goodwood battlefield explaining how to defeat massed armour in open ground dotted with hamlets and farmsteads; by then a prospect faced by Nato forces confronting the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact on the north German plain.
David Madryll Stileman was the son of Commander Arthur Stileman, RN. At Wellington he excelled at rugby and while an instructor at RMA Sandhurst in 1947-48 played for Harlequins and Berkshire and had a trial for England. His preoccupation with the game was surpassed only by his Christian faith; he played his last rugby match aged 51 and hosted Bible study in his House of Lords flat when he was Yeoman Usher to Black Rod after leaving the Army.
His regimental service included the Mau Mau campaign in Kenya with 1st Battalion The Rifle Brigade and then in Malaya during the communist insurrection. Seeking variety, he undertook a secondment as a company commander with the Somaliland Scouts in the late 1950s as the territory approached independence. There was intense competition for service with the Scouts among the local youths; Stileman would kick a rugby ball into the crowd of applicants and grant places to those who emerged — battered, bruised and sometimes bitten — with it.
On promotion to lieutenant-colonel, he commanded the Royal Green Jackets depot and training centre in Winchester, for which service he was appointed OBE. He was later the defence adviser to the British High Commissioner in Lagos, a sensitive post in which two of his predecessors had incurred the displeasure of the Nigerian Government of the day.
He retired from the Army in 1979, having completed his service as the deputy commander of Eastern District, based in Nottingham, 1976-79. Immediately after leaving, he took up the post of assistant to Black Rod as Yeoman Usher in the House of Lords.
These duties did not deflect him from joining Colonel von Luck at the British Staff College annual battlefield tours in Normandy. As is often the case with dangerous but exciting incidents, the story of his platoon’s dash through the hamlet of Hubert-Folie might have obscured the more significant and relevant lessons of skilfully sited defence against massed armour — but for von Luck’s detailed and engaging explanation of the latter.
The two former enemies became close friends and appeared together at military seminars until von Luck’s death in 1997.
In retirement Stileman returned to the house in Wimbledon where he was born. He became a sought-after lay preacher, as well as keeping up his military and sporting connections.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and three sons, one of whom followed him into service with the Royal Green Jackets. His daughter predeceased him.
Brigadier David Stileman, OBE, infantryman, was born on April 9, 1924. He died on June 24, 2011, aged 87
Squadron Leader John Canning
Wartime RAF bomber navigator who was later involved in missions to drop food supplies to the Dutch and to repatriate PoWs
After two tours as a navigator with 115 Squadron in 3 Group in 1943 and 1944, John Canning joined 7 Squadron in 8 Group — the Pathfinder Force (PFF) — with which he served until the end of the war in Europe. During the last few weeks of the conflict he was involved in two mercy missions, Operation Manna, which dropped food to the starving population of the Netherlands, and later Operation Exodus, which repatriated thousands of prisoners of war from Europe. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945.
Born in Dublin in 1920, he was educated at O’Connell Irish Christian Brothers School (one of whose alumni was the fighter ace Paddy Finucane). Canning wanted to join the RAF at the outbreak of war in 1939, but his parents would not let him. Instead he served articles in a firm of solicitors until the age of majority (then 21) when he was able to choose for himself.
After training as a navigator in Canada, in January 1943 he joined 115 Squadron, then still flying the twin-engined Wellington from its base at East Wretham in Norfolk, but in March to be equipped with the Lancaster. Canning had already taken part in service trials of Gee, the first-generation medium-range navigation and bombing aid, with which No 115 was equipped. Between January and July he took part in raids on naval bases on the French coast, St Nazaire and La Rochelle, as well as dropping mines in Dutch waters. Later in his tour he was involved in bombing raids on the cities of German’s Ruhr industrial heartland, Duisburg, Bochum and Gelsenkirchen, as well as sorties against Cologne and Düsseldorf.
Rested from operations in July 1943, he went to an operational training unit where he trained on the new bombing aid, H2S, which provided airborne radar and ground mapping for each aircraft. This gave a new dimension to the accuracy of bombing at ranges outside the effectiveness of Gee and Oboe. When Canning returned to operations with 115 Squadron at Witchford, Cambridgeshire, its Lancasters were now equipped with H2S, which Canning operated in raids on Bremen and Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland).
On August 31, 1944, he was navigator of a Lancaster in a force of 601 aircraft — 418 Lancasters, 147 Halifaxes and 36 Mosquitoes — that bombed nine sites in Northern France where the Germans were believed to be storing V2 rockets. Eight of the sites were identified and wrecked, for the loss of only six Lancasters.
In October 1944 Canning volunteered for the PFF and was posted to 7 Squadron in 8 Group. From December 1944 almost until the end of the war he served as a marker in raids on Leipzig, Nuremberg, Hanover and Munich, among many other targets, and navigated the master bomber’s aircraft in raids on Essen, Hanover and Hamburg. He also took part in what became the controversial raid on Dresden carried out by the RAF on the night of February 13-14, 1945, and supplemented by USAAF daylight raids, which caused large casualties among civilians and refugees from the Eastern Front who had crowded into the city. The final death toll will never be known with any certainty.
In the last fortnight of the war Canning participated in two operations of a very different character. Operation Manna, paralleled by the USAAF Operation Chowhound, was set up with the acquiescence of occupying German forces, to drop food to the Dutch population in the still unliberated areas of the western Netherlands, which was in danger of starving. From April 29, 1945, until the end of the war more than 11,000 tons of food were dropped. A second mission in which he was pleased to participate was Operation Exodus, which repatriated more than 70,000 prisoners of war from Europe from early May onwards.
Canning remained in the RAF after the war, continuing flying into the jet age, until 1959. He retired as a squadron leader in 1970 and went back to the law, becoming a partner in a firm of solicitors in Essex.
He married his wife, Joy, a WAAF, in 1946. He is survived by her and by three children.
Squadron Leader John Canning, DFC, wartime bomber navigator, was born on January 28, 1920. He died on June 6, 2011, aged 91
Flying Officer Geoffrey Fisken
Wartime New Zealand fighter ace who brought down seven Japanese aircraft in four weeks during the forlorn defence of Singapore
The top-scoring Commonwealth fighter pilot in the air battles against the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, Geoffrey Fisken was involved in the desperate and ultimately futile defence of Singapore as the Japanese tide swept forward, engulfing British and Allied possessions in Asia in early 1942.
Remarkably, given that RAF and Commonwealth squadrons were not only outnumbered, but hampered by their inferior aircraft, equipment and maintenance facilities, he scored seven combat victories during this dire period, making him an ace (five kills) in the space of four weeks.
Lucky enough to be evacuated from the scene and able to return to New Zealand where he served for a period on home defence duties, he returned to the front line in the campaign in the Solomons in April 1943 and had further combat victories . He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in September that year, by which time he had been credited with 11 combat victories.
Geoffrey Bryson Fisken was born in 1916 in Gisborne, in the North Island of New Zealand. His father owned a sheep station and he followed in his footsteps at the same time learning to fly, taking lessons in a Gypsy Moth during the 1930s.
In September 1939 he volunteered for the Royal New Zealand Air Force. But sheep farming was considered a reserved occupation, and it was not until the following year that his employer released him and he was allowed to enlist.
After training at New Plymouth and Ohakea he graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1941 and was posted that February to Singapore to join 205 Squadron RAF, a flying boat unit. He was soon on a conversion course to fighters, flying the Australian-built Wirraway and the American-built Brewster Buffalo. He was posted to 67 Squadron, but this was dispatched to Burma in October 1941 and Fisken joined 243 Squadron at RAF Kallang in Malaya, flying the Buffalos. This was a fighter that had seen service with the Finns against the Soviet Air Force during the “Winter War” of 1939-40, but was not much liked by its British and Commonwealth pilots, largely because the aircraft that had arrived in Singapore had badly conditioned engines, barely serviceable guns and a malfunctioning oxygen system.
As the Japanese invaded Malaya Fisken’s was one of two Buffaloes that on December 10 arrived over the battleship Prince of Wales just as she was disappearing under the waves, having been sunk by Japanese aircraft along with the battlecruiser Repulse after bombing and torpedo attacks that had lasted almost two hours. As the Japanese advanced down the Malay peninsula towards Singapore 243 Squadron was in the forefront of the air defence of the city. From then on the air fighting was intense and attritional.
Fisken shot down a Japanese Army 97 bomber on January 12, a Japanese Navy Zero fighter on the 14th, two more 97s on the 17th plus a probable and one more damaged on that day and another Zero on the 21st. But 243’s own casualties were terrible. By the time he had his final combat victory on February 21, the squadron had virtually ceased to exist, having lost most of its aircraft and pilots in the face of overwhelming, well-serviced Japanese air power. In the moment of his own victory that day, Fisken was assailed by two more fighters and was wounded twice: in the arm by a machine gun round and in the hip by a cannon shell fragment.
He was evacuated from Singapore before the surrender of the island on February 15 and returned to New Zealand where, after recovering from his wounds he was commissioned and posted to 14 Squadron RNZAF flying Curtis P40 Kittyhawks. This was sent for a tour of operations in the Solomon Islands where, flying from Guadalcanal, he had four more combat victories — against Japanese fighters and a possible fifth against a Betty bomber, flying his personalised P40, NZ3072, the Wairarapa Wild Cat. He was awarded the DFC in September 1943.
Still suffering from the injuries he had sustained over Singapore which gave him increasing trouble as time went on, he was stood down from operations and in December that year invalided out of the RNZAF. He had a tally of 11 combat victories certified and a probable, which makes it likely that he had bagged a round dozen.
Fisken returned to farming in Rotorua, North Island, where he lived for the rest of his life, eventually selling his farm and working in management for the Egg Marketing Board.
NZ3072 was scrapped after the war, but NZ3009 was restored and painted to represent NZ3072 the famous Wild Cat. Fisken was reunited with this aircraft at an air show at Masterton in 2005.
He and his wife, Rhoda, who died in 1997, had a daughter and five sons.
Flying Officer Geoffrey Fisken, DFC, New Zealand fighter ace, was born on February 17, 1916. He died on June 12, 2011, aged 95
Inspiring leader who earned the Military Cross during the withdrawal to Dunkirk and again during the fierce Ardennes fighting in 1945
Short in stature but a resolute fighting soldier, “Joe” Cêtre won his first Military Cross during the withdrawal to Dunkirk in 1940 and the second, four and a half years later, in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the German Ardennes offensive in January 1945. An enthusiast for the history of war, after completing his service as a professional soldier, he became a professor at the Portuguese Military Academy in Lisbon.
Fernand Octavo Cêtre was born in Clapham, South London, the only son of a French immigrant father from Burgundy and a German mother. The family were devoutly Catholic, resulting in the young Cêtre attending the long-established Catholic Clapham College before going to Sandhurst.
Commissioned in July 1937 he joined the East Lancashire Regiment, for which he had applied because of the high proportion of Roman Catholics among the officers and men. On joining the 1st Battalion in Palace Barracks, Belfast, the bushy moustache he had at the time earned him the nickname “Joe” after the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The name stuck for life.
His battalion joined the British Expeditionary Force in France in April 1940, three weeks before the German onslaught through the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France. Moved forward into Belgium with the 42nd Infantry Division to help to try to stem the enemy offensive, the 1st East Lancashires established their initial defensive position at Tournai, on the bank of the Escaut Canal, but were quickly outflanked and forced to withdraw.
Although he was seeing action for the first time, Cêtre’s leadership and initiative quickly became apparent. Twice he led forward fighting patrols to clear the enemy from threatening positions on the battalion’s flanks and, at one point where the enemy broke through, turned their attack away by the sheer dynamism of the local counter-attack he inspired and led. He was the acting second-in-command of his company when they reached Dunkirk; there he brought forward — under fire — ammunition essential for the battalion to plug a widening gap in the defensive perimeter. In the ensuing action his company commander, Major Marcus Ervine-Andrews, won the only VC of the campaign.
Cêtre received the MC for gallantry and outstanding leadership throughout the withdrawal. Twenty years later, while commanding the successor battalion, he unveiled the commemorative painting of the stand of 1st East Lancashires on the Dunkirk perimeter on June 1, 1940.
The years between the withdrawal of the BEF from the Continent and the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 involved intensive training: first to repel the expected German invasion that threatened until Hitler turned on Soviet Russia in June 1941, then in anticipation of D-Day. Cêtre served with the same battalion throughout and was commanding a company when it crossed to France with the 53rd (Welsh) Division on June 25, 1944.
The battalion was soon heavily involved in the fighting around Caen, then in the advance through dense bocage country towards the River Orne before staging a battalion attack on the fortified village of Bois Halbout. This was taken successfully but with significant losses.
Cêtre’s battalion had its toughest battle of the northwest Europe campaign at Grimbiémont in the Ardennes in January 1945. By then, the German offensive intended to divide the Allied armies and retake the port of Antwerp had been contained and defeated, after Eisenhower’s decision put all forces on the northern flank of the incursion, British and American, under Montgomery’s command. But German resistance remained determined and professionally highly competent.
The Grimbiémont attack required a 1,500-yard advance across open, snow-covered ground with Cêtre’s A Company on the right flank supported by a squadron of Sherman tanks. The snow prevented the tanks reaching the start line, so Cêtre pushed forward towards its first objective — supported only by indirect fire — reaching it with just one of his three platoons and his own tactical headquarters. Isolated, but holding ground key to the battalion’s success, he held on until the enemy had been driven from the forward edge of Grimbiémont. Having by then gathered up the survivors of his two missing platoons, he moved forward to secure the far end of the objective allowing the battalion to consolidate its hold and clear the rest of the village. He was awarded an immediate Bar to his MC.
Severely wounded by a shell that struck his company headquarters after the Rhine crossing in March 1945, Cêtre was evacuated to the regimental aid post. A young officer of the battalion who was informed that his brother had been injured in the same attack went to the aid post to find out about him. Discovering that his brother was not seriously injured, he asked the medical orderlies who the casualty on a stretcher covered with a blanket was. When they told him it was Major Cêtre and they were unsure whether he was still alive, the young officer lifted the blanket to reveal a pale sweating figure. He asked: “Joe, are you still with us?” The response from Cêtre was that not only was he still alive, but that he would back in the fight in the morning.
His wounds were too serious for that but on recovery in England he attended the Staff College. Subsequently he served in Palestine, Malaya and in various staff appointments until assuming command of his regiment, taking it through amalgamation with the South Lancashire Regiment to form the Lancashire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Volunteers) in 1958.
After an appointment with the Nato mission in Portugal he retired from the Army in 1967 initially to manage a holiday complex near Lisbon. He was later the general secretary of the British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, 1973-76, then Professor of English at the Portuguese officer training college, the Academia Militar, in Lisbon, 1976-86. He also became a recognised authority on Wellington’s Peninsular War defences — the Lines at Torres Vedras — and served for many years as honorary secretary of the Royal British Legion in Portugal.
His wife, Margaret, predeceased him. There were no children.
Lieutenant-Colonel F. O. “Joe” Cêtre, MC and Bar, was born on July 30, 1916. He died on July 1, 2011, aged 94
