This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in November 2021
On Sunday the 14th of this month, Thursley History Society is holding the long awaited VE Day exhibition in the village hall between 10am and 4pm. Please do pop in to listen, see and touch the exhibits that demonstrate the lives and times of the village and villagers during the war years.
As disclosed last month, we are delighted to be launching our book “Thursley Remembers” at the exhibition, and in order to whet your appetite before then, I thought an excerpt from it would be a suitable enticement!
PARKER, Alfred Nigel, Major.
5th Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders
Died 23rd October 1944.
In the 1922 issue of “Small Country Houses of Today” magazine, Foldsdown House, Thursley, was described as “taking its place naturally and pleasantly in a part of Surrey so beautiful that an ill-considered building is more than usually an outrage”.
It was here that Nigel Parker grew up, having been born in the September of 1915, to his parents, Alwyn Parker, C.B, C.M.G, a respected diplomat and City banker, and Sophia, a society figure in her own right. He was baptised in the church of St Michael’s and All Saints on October 15th by the Reverend C.K. Watson.
His early education took place at St Peter’s Court, a preparatory school in Burgess Hill, Sussex, followed by his moving to Harrow School. After his time at Harrow, he went up to read law at New College, Oxford, in anticipation of a career in the legal profession in the City. Whilst at Oxford, he successfully rowed for his college.
After coming down from Oxford, he was articled to the long-established Solicitor’s firm of Linklaters & Paines, in London, where he worked until the outbreak of war in September 1939. As soon as that occurred, he made the decision to join the ranks of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders.
It was at this time, in the January of 1940, that he also married the American born twenty-year-old Jean Cecelia Constance Eliott in the Chelsea Register Office, a larger society wedding being impossible at the time, due to his military commitments. They were to have two children, a son, Colin, born in November 1940, and a daughter, Veronica, born two years later, in May 1942.
In 1940, The Queen’s went to France as part of the 51st (Highland) Division with the British Expeditionary Force, in an attempt to stem the tide of the German armies which were sweeping down through the Low Countries and into Northern France. When it became apparent that the Allied troops needed to be evacuated, plans were put into force that resulted in the events that, these days, we know simply by one word – Dunkirk.
In order to hamper the relentless progress of the Germans, the Queen’s saw action at the town of St. Valery-en-Calais, and it was during this fighting that Nigel Parker was wounded.
In the middle of battle, he was shot in one leg by a sniper; falling to the ground, he rolled over, to be then shot in the other leg. It was ironic that it appears that his wearing a kilt (contrary to regulations) in fact saved his life – he was told by his doctor that the kilt had saved him, as a khaki battle dress would have poisoned the wounds. As a result, he was invalided home, where he recovered. He then spent the rest of the war, until 1944, training troops in Scotland, near Inverness.
After the D Day landing of June 1944, he rejoined his unit, and once again landed in France. His superior officer, Colonel (later General Sir) Derek Laing sent him in command of D company, as the first British troops to re-enter the newly liberated St. Valery-en-Calais, after it had been forced to surrender back in 1940. This was regarded as a great honour.
As the Division moved northwards towards Germany, in October the Queen’s found itself as part of Operation Pheasant, which was a major operation to clear German troops from the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. And it was here that Nigel Parker fell, in the middle of fierce fighting during the liberation of the town of Schijndel.
The night of Sunday 22nd October 1944 was notably dark and cold. For the men of the Queen’s their attack area was an open meadow that they had to pass over, in order to reach the enemy lines. Their target was the elimination of a strong German detachment of Fallschrirmjager soldiers of the German 59th Division, located by a railway line in the De Berg area of Schijndel.
At midnight, there was a heavy artillery bombardment in support of the troops, who then proceeded to advance towards the German position. They had to move forward through open meadows as well as marshy peatlands, totally without cover, and they were hit heavily by German machine guns with tracer ammunition as well as sustained mortar fire. It was said that “Hell broke loose”.
Major Parker was hit three times in a row, twice he managed to get up, according to eyewitnesses, but the last hit was fatal.
The battle continued all night, until at about 6am a group of Sherman tanks appeared, and the Germans withdrew. A total of 12 men were killed that night, plus a further 56 either injured or seriously wounded.
The next morning, the 12 dead bodies lying in the field were collected by their own men under the supervision of a Padre Smith and buried in temporary graves nearby, at a local farm owned at the time by the Van Mensvelt family. They were later reburied, with full honours, in the nearby Uden War Cemetery.
A fellow soldier on the day of the battle, Sgt George Sands, said of his commander “Major Parker had been a good commander and friend and a very brave man”.
This is but one of the many tales relating to the names on our war memorial in the churchyard. There are many more, as each name is included. Please buy a copy of “Thursley Remembers” and keep for future generations to “Never Forget”.
The book was published in 2021 and was made possible by the support of the Armed Forces Covenant Fund. It contains details of the twenty seven names on the War Memorial located in the cemetry of St Michael and All Angels. They are persons who died in both World wars, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, in the service of their country and for the cause of freedom from tyranny and oppression.
See also Thursley Goes to War
The file below is a copy of the Remembrance Day Service held on Sunday, November 12, 2023