Trevor Whitaker
Rifle Brigade officer awarded an MC for courage under fire
TREVOR WHITAKER, who has died aged 94, won an MC in Holland in 1944 while serving with the Rifle Brigade.
On October 17, Whitaker was in Holland and serving with F Company, 8th
Bn The Rifle Brigade, part of 29th Armoured Brigade,
11th Armoured Division. He was in command of a group consisting of a mortar platoon, a section of carriers and a troop of tanks of the 23rd Hussars.
The road south of Merselo, north-east of Eindhoven, was cratered by the enemy and trees had been felled to make formidable roadblocks. Whitaker had the task of clearing the roadblocks and filling in the craters while under relentless mortar fire. Casualties mounted, but despite being wounded in the leg, he refused to be evacuated until his force was ordered to stop work as another route had been found. He was awarded an Immediate MC.
Trevor Arthur Anthony Whitaker was born in Chelsea on January 14 1924. An ancestor, Benjamin Ingham, a Yorkshireman, built up a highly successful business in Marsala wine in Sicily in the early 19th century and when he died in 1861 was said to be one of the richest men in the world.
He was greatly assisted by his Whitaker nephews. When the first of these died young, Ingham is said to have sent a message to their mother (his sister) which read: “Your son is dead. Please send me another.” The business continued to prosper and the Whitakers lived a comfortable life in Palermo and England.
Raymond, Trevor Whitaker’s father, had served in the Rifle Brigade, the Royal Flying Corps and the RAF. Young Trevor was educated at Eton, where he was captain of his house, and went up to King’s College, Cambridge, for a term before joining the Rifle Brigade in October 1942.
At the end of June 1944, he landed at Arromanches, Normandy, and joined F Company, 8th Bn, at Bretteville. The Company fought their way through the bocage country, west of Caen, and on August 16 took part in the liberation of the town of Flers.
After the action in which he was wounded, he was evacuated to England to recuperate. He subsequently caught mumps and it was mid-april 1945 before he rejoined his battalion shortly after its arrival at Belsen concentration camp where management of the appalling conditions there was already under way.
He finished the campaign in Schleswig-holstein and remained in Germany for a period. He was adjutant of the 1st Battalion, Rifle Brigade, from 1946 to 1948 and held the same appointment at the Rifle Depot, Winchester, from 1949 to 1950. After three years at the War Office, in September 1953 he retired from the Army.
Whitaker then joined the printing and packaging firm of Mardon, Son & Hall (a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco) in Bristol, where he worked on the administrative side. In 1975 he took early retirement to involve himself in public service and charity work.
He was the church warden at Butcombe, Somerset, for several years and a General Commissioner of Taxes between 1974 and 1994. A real countryman with a wide knowledge of birds and other wildlife, he enjoyed fishing on the River Avon at Great Durnford, Wiltshire.
He and his wife moved to a village in Dorset in 2004. In 2015, the French Government appointed him a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
Trevor Whitaker married, in 1951, Jennifer (Jebber) Howson, who survives him with their son and daughter.
Trevor Whitaker, born January 14 1924, died April 12 2018