Major Jeffrey Noble
Paratrooper who served in Operation Market Garden
MAJOR JEFFREY NOBLE, who has died aged 96, served with a parachute battalion at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944.
Noble commanded a medium machine gun (MMG) platoon of 156 Parachute Battalion, part of 4th Brigade, 1st Airborne Division, in Operation Market Garden, an audacious attempt to capture the road and rail bridges over the Rhine and bring the war to a swift end.
On September 18 1944, he and his men took off in two Dakota aircraft from Saltby Airfield, near Grantham. The Dakota carrying half his platoon was hit by flak and crashed, killing all on board. Noble’s aircraft flew on and dropped its men near Ede, eight miles from Arnhem.
At Battalion HQ, finding that he had only one machine gun instead of four and 10 men instead of his original 36, Noble commandeered a gun from another unit. At first light the next day, in an attempt to get through to the beleaguered paratroopers at the Arnhem bridge, Brigadier Hackett ordered 4th Brigade to attack the strongly defended positions on the Dreijenseweg (German blocking line).
Noble’s small force, heavily outgunned by tanks and multi-barrelled anti-aircraft guns, was ordered to pull back to the village of Wolfheze. As dawn broke on September 20, some 130 men of 156 Para Bn found themselves surrounded. Noble led a charge with fixed bayonets in an effort to break through and reach tree cover but, with their ammunition exhausted and hundreds of Germans moving into the area, they were forced to surrender. Noble spent the rest of the war in Oflag 79, near Braunschweig.
Jeffrey Fraser Noble was born at Ilford, Essex, on October 15 1923 and educated at Southend High School. He joined the Queen’s Royal Regiment in May 1942 and transferred to the Parachute Regiment soon after he was commissioned.
After rigorous training he was posted to 156 Para Bn and deployed to Sousse, Tunisia, as commander of the MMG Platoon. In September 1943 the battalion, part of 1st Airborne Division, made a successful seaborne landing at Taranto, Italy.
Noble saw his first action against German paratroopers as his guns supported C Company’s attack on the hillside village of Mottola, driving off the Germans and repeating this achievement in a subsequent action at Castanelletta. After the capture of the strategically important airfield at Gioia del Colle, in December 1943 the battalion returned to England, to Melton Mowbray, to train for Operation Market Garden.
While in Melton Mowbray his fun-loving personality came to the fore: he and two fellow subalterns became great friends and pranksters, known as “the Three Must Get Beers”.
In July 1945 Noble joined 1st Parachute Battalion and went to Palestine as a company second-incommand. After staff appointments at HQ 6th Airborne Division and RAF Fairford, in late 1948 he joined the Royal Fusiliers and served in Egypt.
A spell in Palestine as GSO3 with 3 Brigade was followed by a return to the Parachute Regiment. In October 1956, he retired from the Army. He pursued a successful career in human resources, culminating in a senior appointment with Itteurope in Brussels.
In 1980 he and his wife Bobbie moved to Annecy in south-eastern France. They became closely involved with the veterans of the French Resistance who had fought at the Battle of Glières in the mountainous, wooded region of Savoie, and Noble played a leading part in setting up exhibits for a new museum in Annecy illustrating the struggle.
When the Queen Mother visited the region in 1991, he showed her around the museum and introduced her to veterans. In 1996 he was awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite.
Jeffrey Noble married, in 1945, Rebecca (Bobbie) Robinson; she survives him with their son and two daughters.
Jeffrey Noble, born October 15 1923, died June 4 2020