STANLEY CHRISTOPHERSON
It’s very hard to choose just one hero when I have so many. I’m a massive fan of Field Marshal Alexander, for example, a brilliant man who, I think, has been rather underappreciated in recent times. So too has General Sir Francis Tuker, perhaps the greatest army commander Britain never had (for a variety of complex but regrettable reasons). Or how about that fearless American fighter pilot, Don Blakeslee, commander of the outstanding 4th Fighter Group? Or so many others? It’s an impossible task.
But I’m going to choose someone barely known at all: Lieutenant-colonel Stanley Christopherson, who commanded the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry during the last eleven months of the war against Nazi Germany, and brilliantly so too, despite some 43 per cent of those serving in the regiment’s tanks being killed during that time, and even though a huge number of tank crews became casualties. Somehow, he managed to keep them all going, maintain morale, keep hold of his humanity and kindness, stay smiling and laughing, and at the same time do the very best for his men.
Christopherson had worked in South Africa and then in the City as a stockbroker before the war. He was charming, affable and very bright, and got on with everyone, no matter what walk of life they came from. With war looming, he and several friends joined the Inns of Court Yeomanry, and then, at the outbreak of war, was posted to the Sherwood Rangers, who were at the time mostly drawn from the shires of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. In early 1940, he and the regiment were posted to Palestine – with their horses – and even took part in a sabres-drawn cavalry charge against Arab insurrectionists. Yet times were changing, and before long their horses were taken away and they temporarily became gunners, considered massively infra dig by most of the regiment. It was as a gunner that Christopherson – and more than half the regiment – were posted to Tobruk and took part in the siege of 1941, although by the autumn of that year they were back in Egypt, and beginning the transformation into an armoured regiment. It had taken this long to get enough tanks produced and out to the Middle East.
At this point, Christopherson and others all started to realise the importance of training hard and trying to become the very best soldiers they could. This also appealed to Christopherson’s competitive instinct, but by the Battle of Alam el Halfa at the end of August 1942, he was a Squadron commander and licking his men into shape. They subsequently performed brilliantly at Alamein and throughout the rest of the North Africa campaign. By its end, the Sherwood Rangers were among the best and most experienced armoured regiments in the British Army, which was why they were earmarked for D-day.
They landed on Gold Beach on 6 June 1944 and within four days had lost two commanding officers, with one fatally. On 11 June, Christopherson took command, determined to introduce a new style of leadership: one that was firm but compassionate, realistic but optimistic, and in which every voice and every life counted. Their reputation proceeded them as a regiment that was unflinching, courageous, determined and prepared to stick at it, no matter how tough the situation. They were the only armoured regiment to be attached to two US divisions, for example, largely down to Christopherson’s tact, charm and willingness to co-operate. There was a reason why the Sherwood Rangers became the single unit in the British Army with more battle honours than any other, and that was because they were in the most battles.
Through it all, Christopherson kept his sense of humour, love of the ridiculous and his humanity, noticing a first snowdrop in spring, putting on a Christmas party for the children of the Dutch town in which they were billeted, and steering his men through among the most brutal, violent and challenging fighting any British unit had to face in the entire final 11 months of the war. His men adored him. “He was a very great man,” said John Semken, one of his squadron commanders. “I just don’t know how he kept going. I don’t know how he did it.” He was certainly a proper hero.