"I HAD a letter this morning from a mother, one of the hundreds of thousands of mothers who lost a son in the war. " I beg you, " she wrote, "to write an inspired article about Malta, and I enclose a poem my dear dead son wrote whilst there. I enclose a snapshot of him when he was at Sandhurst. He was over 6 ft., with very fair hair and blue eyes--a typical British officer. Write it as a tribute to his regiment, the 2nd Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment"; as I read, I could feel the pride and grief burning through the lines. "He went all through the siege"…"he was mentioned in dispatches"…"fought all through Sicily, where he won the immediate award of the M.C. and Bar"; an honour only given to very brave men—was severely wounded, rejoined his unit in Italy, later returned to England, and died leading his company to the assault on the D-Day beaches."

Source and further information: http://www.warchronicle.com/50th_div/soldierstory_wwii/duke.htm
 

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