Lt-Col Bernard Jarvis
Fought in Tunisia and led troops over a route sown with mines
LIEUTENANTCOLONEL BERNARD JARVIS, who has died aged 96, was awarded a Military Cross in Tunisia in 1943 at the Battle of Mareth.
In March of that year Jarvis commanded a troop of the 3rd (Cheshire) Field Squadron RE (3 CFS). He and his men were clearing mines in the Matmata Hills in order to open a direct line of communication between the Eighth Army’s forward supply base and the area occupied by 10 Corps.
Sitting on sandbags on the bonnet of his jeep, bayonet in hand, with more sandbags on the bumper and around the driver’s feet, he led his troop over a route sown with anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines which was not yet clear of enemy units. He completed the task quickly and so thoroughly that the brigade which followed him did not lose a single vehicle and suffered no casualties.
Jarvis was awarded an Immediate MC. The citation paid tribute to the exceptional ability that he had shown when he had taken command of his Squadron after both his CO and second-in-command were killed.
Bernard Sydney Jarvis was born at Colchester on July 7 1920. He was educated at Warwick School before attending the RMA Woolwich where he boxed for the Academy. In 1940 he was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers and, the following year, embarked for Egypt. He was posted to HQ 10 Corps and helped to build defensive lines at El Alamein and in the Lebanon.
In the early part of 1942, the Eighth Army suffered one reverse after another. On one occasion, Jarvis was in his jeep in the featureless desert and was not sure of his bearings. He came across a long column of British lorries and drove to the front with the intention of asking for directions. To his horror, he discovered that the whole convoy had been captured. He wasted no time in getting away.
At the Battle of El Alamein in October, he commanded a troop of CFS. They followed a rolling artillery barrage to a minefield sown with deadly S-mines which they then cleared.
In Tunisia a party of four senior officers insisted on entering a minefield that had not yet been cleared, in order to demonstrate that they were prepared to do everything that they were ordering others to do. All were killed by a deadly shrapnel mine. Jarvis was one of the rescue party and he, too, was wounded when another mine exploded. He and his comrades lay there dazed, not daring to move until a second rescue party arrived and got them out.
He attended Staff College at Quetta (now in Pakistan), before seeing action in Italy and Germany. After the war, he went up to Downing College, Cambridge, where he took a First in Mechanical Sciences. He served in Malaya between 1951 and 1953 during the Emergency, the Suez Campaign in 1956 and Germany for most of the period between 1955 and 1958.
Jarvis commanded the Cambridge University Officer Training Corps from 1958 to 1960 before moving to the MoD. After retiring from the Army, he worked at the Army Operational Research Establishment at West Byfleet, Surrey, for two years.
For 13 years, he was a councillor on Runnymede Council and, for eight years, on Surrey county council. He was president of his local branch of the Royal British Legion. From 1982 to 1990, he was chairman of the governors of Sir William Perkins’s School, Chertsey, which he helped to develop from a grammar school to a successful independent school for girls.
In retirement, he lived in a village in Surrey and enjoyed walking, gardening, travel and visiting sites of historical military importance.
Bernard Jarvis married, in 1946, Elizabeth (Barbie) Dashfield. She predeceased him and he is survived by their daughter and their two sons.
Bernard Jarvis, born July 7 1920, died January 11 2017