Lt-col Aidan Sprot
Soldier who won an Immediate MC for his services in France
LIEUTENANTCOLONEL AIDAN SPROT, who has died aged 101, won an MC on the Somme in 1944 while serving with the Royal Scots Greys.
On September 1
1944, Sprot was in command of the Reconnaissance Troop during the advance to seize a crossing over the River Somme. At Bettencourt, northwest of Amiens, he discovered a concealed approach over a tributary to the Somme and crossed it before the Germans had time to blow it.
In a Stuart tank, he led the forward squadron to Longpré-les Corps-saints, where there were two stone bridges wired for demolition. He drove across these, ignoring the presence of a man who seemed to be preparing to blow them.
At the third bridge, constructed of wood, he was held up by enemy 20mm guns firing at a range of 80 yards. When these were knocked out, a Scissors bridge was laid to strengthen it. This did not completely span the bridge, and in order to test whether it would take the weight of a tank, Sprot took his tank across under intense sniper fire from the houses around the bridge.
No more than half a squadron had crossed to the village of Long when one of their Sherman tanks slipped off the ramp, blocking the bridge. The tank and the Scissors bridge then had to be pushed into the river. The sappers declared that the bridge had become too weak to take any more tanks.
Sprot and his small force went through the village and took up positions on the high ground beyond it. The following day, he helped to drive off a determined attempt to retake the village. He was awarded an Immediate MC and was invested with the decoration by Field Marshal Montgomery.
Aidan Mark Sprot, the son of Major Mark Sprot of Riddell, was born on June 17 1919 at his family home, near Selkirk, Scottish Borders, and was educated at Stowe. After a spell at a London City desk he volunteered for Army Service on the outbreak of the Second World War and followed his father into the Greys.
He was commissioned in 1941 and served in Palestine on internal security duties before moving to the
Western Desert, where he took part in the Battle of El Alamein and the pursuit to Tripoli. After landing at Salerno he experienced hard fighting in the long slog north through the mountains of Italy before returning with the Greys to England to re-equip for the invasion.
D+1 saw the first of their tanks ashore on the Normandy beaches. Sprot commanded the Reconnaissance Troop, consisting of lightly armoured scout cars equipped with machineguns. The regiment played a notable part in the break-out and the push eastwards through Belgium and the Netherlands and the forced crossing of the Rhine before meeting the forward elements of the Soviet Army at Wismar, on the Baltic coast, at the end of the war.
In 1950 he commanded C Squadron, and in 1952 took it to Cyrenaica. He served as training officer to the Ayrshire Yeomanry, and in 1959 assumed command of the Greys, moving them to Detmold in Germany the following year.
Sprot retired from the Army in 1962 and, at the request of his uncle, Duncan Hay, moved to Haystoun, near Peebles, to help run the estate which he subsequently inherited. He was, variously, a county councillor, county director of the Red Cross, Boy Scouts Commissioner, and Lordlieutenant of Tweeddale for 14 years.
He was appointed to the Légion d’honneur in 2015 in a ceremony performed in a French destroyer anchored in the Firth of Forth. He listed his interests as country pursuits and motor cycle touring. He published Swifter Than Eagles: War Memoirs 1939-1945 in 1998. Aidan Sprot, born June 17 1919, died January 28 2021