Churchill Named trunk
Hi Guys,
I have had this in the roof for a while and re-discovered it while clearing out.
It is named to Brigadier TBL Churchill MC of the 2nd Battalion The Manchester Regiment.
He was Brother to Mad Jack and Buster Churchill.
A brief summary taken from http://www.deddingtonhistory.uk/__da...tentsjan15.pdf
THOMAS BELL LINDSAY CHURCHILL
General Tom Churchill comes of an old Oxfordshire yeoman family whose origins go back to the
fifteenth century. During the days of Empire representatives of his family served in India and Ceylon as
soldiers and civil engineers, and in the two World Wars they fought and died in the service of their king.
In 1926, Tom Churchill passed in 7th to the Royal Military College (as it was called then), Sandhurst,
thereby gaining a prize cadetship, and he passed out sixth, winning the prize sword for Military History
in the following year.
He joined The Manchester Regiment in Burma in 1927 and three years later moved to Secunderabad,
Deccan, India. In 1931 the Regiment was recalled to Burma because the Burma Rebellion had broken
out, and a force of brigade strength was sent to that country to quell the outbreak. Churchill commanded
his platoon in an isolated village post a few miles east of Prome in the southern Irrawaddy District, and
after a month of ceaseless searching in the paddy fields, villages and jungle by day and night, managed to
confront a rebel gang, kill the leader and two of his confederates, and capture the remainder. Churchill was
mentioned in Despatches and awarded the Military Cross for his leadership in the hunt. He was aged 24.
After being made Adjutant of his Regiment (the youngest in the Army), he moved with his battalion to
the Sudan, and then in 1933, returned to England.
Two years later Tom Churchill was appointed instructor in the interpretation of air photographs, and in
due course became the expert in this form of intelligence. When war was imminent he ran courses to
teach RAF Bomber Command intelligence officers how to estimate bomb damage to factories, railway
yards and ports. Later he assisted in establishing the inter-service interpretation establishment at
Medmenham, where later the German flying bombs were discovered.
He was attached to RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, but, tiring of a job on the staff,
he joined the Army Commandos for the invasion of Sicily, and the landing at Salerno in Italy. When his
friend Sir Robert Laycock was made Director of Combined Operations, in succession to Lord Louis
Mountbatten, Tom succeeded Laycock as commander of the Commando Brigade in Italy. He led it in the
landing at Anzio, and then took command of the island of Vis in the Adriatic, which he put in a state of
defence, as the Germans were occupying all the other Yugoslav islands lying between Split and
Dubrovnik.
In June 1944, Marshal Josip Broz Tito was chased out of Yugoslavia by a German parachute raid at
Drvar in Montenegro, and was brought by British destroyer to Vis. Churchill and his Commando
Brigade guaranteed his safety, and Tom came to know him well. It was also on Vis Island that he met
Fitzroy
Maclean, later Sir Fitzroy, and made a lasting friend of this outstanding guerrilla leader.
In September 1944 he landed with his Commando Brigade in Albania, where, after a hard fight in
appalling weather, he defeated the Germans at Sarande (Santa Quaranta), cut off their retreat to Germany,
and went on to liberate the island of Corfu.
After the war, Churchill commanded the British Zone in Austria He was then appointed as Major
General in charge of administration in the Far East Command, with headquarters at Singapore, and then
became Vice Quartermaster General to the Forces at the War Office. His final appointment was as
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Land Forces in NATO at Fontainebleau.
In 1948 Churchill was sent a copy of General Eisenhower's book, Crusade In Europe. On the fly-leaf
Ike had written: -
For Brigadier T.B.L Churchill
For admiration and high esteem
to a brilliant leader in World War II.
Dwight D Eisenhower
.
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