Snapshots of men during wartime
The quiet moments - The fighting men were forbidden to keep records
If you are relatives of, or researching other men involved in the unit please supply portraits and a few words. info@30AU.co.uk
Minden-45 Flynn, Guy, Cpl Smedley, Rush, Higgins
Part of B-Troop, celebrating VE day,
Minden Germany 1945
Minden Germany 1945
Rush_Guy_Higgins
Minden Barracks
Flyyn
Flyn_Guy_?_Higgins
Minden Barracks
Bill Cole Album
Mne R Guy
Sniper. D&D Guy. Beau Bete.
71349859_10162318316510293_7646770103194
Rush, Guy, Higgins
Minden Baracks VE
Winnie & Hoppy
RM Bill Cole
Cassanova & Shiner
Bill Cole's album
Taffy Nutty Cookie
30AU_men
G'Dads photos 012
G'Dads photos 011.
mascot_minden
Bed_forthe_night?
Flynn, Higgins, Guy
Mascot
J. Mann's (right winger)
Bill Cole Album
Minden_sports_stadium
Doc
Minden_TugOwar
Joe Murphy RM
Joe looking at camera.jpg
Nuemunster_45 Wireless station
Radio_Station
Radio_Station A-trp
RM R Guy Sniper. Called Beau Bete by the FFI. An insult in France. But translates to Handsome Beast in English.
Nuemunster_45 Wireless station
Nuemunster_45 Wireless station
Mclean_Germanflag
Nuemunster_45 Wireless station
Nuemunster45
pyramid
McMullen Guy Jemmett
Nuemunster45_May
Barbers
Nuemunster_45 Wireless station
luger
Ron Guy & Cpl.Webber
Gungadin Nutty Perry
Taffy Nutty Walkadine Perry
R H Quill Hitler's HQ
LT. COL. R. H. QUILL, RM
We were recently contacted by a relative of 'H' as he was known, and she has been kind enough to allow me to publish these photos of him.
Raymond Humphery Quill was born in May 1897, the son of Major-General Richard Quill, C.B., and was educated at Wellington and Cheltenham. Commissioned into the R.M.L.I. at about the time of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, and following a brief period of training, he served out in the Dardanelles and in France, in which latter theatre of war he was mentioned for his ‘zeal, initiative and courage ... and resource under fire’ by Lieutenant-Colonel C. Omaston, Commanding R.M.A. Anti-Aircraft Brigade. Quill spent the remainder of the War aboard the battleship Lord Nelson out in the Aegean and Caspian and was onetime a personal aide to the S.N.O. Piraeus.
Between the Wars he enjoyed further seagoing appointments and was appointed M.V.O. in 1935 for his services during the Duke of Gloucester’s visit to Australia and New Zealand, the same year in which he was advanced to Major. But in the period leading up to the renewal of hostilities he was increasingly employed by Naval Intelligence, the period 1937-39 seeing him employed as a Staff Officer (Intelligence) out in Singapore. Returning home in the latter year, he took up another intelligence post at the Admiralty, and in 1940 he accompanied the Royal Marines Expedition to Iceland, where he managed to prevent the enemy from destroying their papers and documents - an opening success in intelligence gathering that would set the pattern for his later wartime career in North-West Europe. First of all, however, he was posted to the Middle East as a Staff Officer (Intelligence), in which capacity he served until returning home in 1944.
30 Assault Unit, R.M.
Thus ensued his final wartime appointment as C.O. of 30 Assault Unit, R.M., the jeep-bound Commando which on occasion operated ahead of the advancing Allies in North-West Europe in order to surprise the enemy and capture valuable secret papers and weapons. Comprising two dozen R.N. and R.M. officers, and around 300 R.M. Commandos and ratings, 30 A.U. went onto achieve some notable successes, not least the seizure of the enemy’s Naval H.Q. in Paris, complete with a mass of paperwork, the capture at Kiel of Dr. Walter, the inventor of high-speed hydrogen peroxide engines for torpedoes and U-Boats, and the discovery in a remote Bavarian schloss of the archives of the German Navy dating back to 1870.
Quill first arrived in France in November 1944, and, following early success at the German Naval H.Q. in Paris, moved on to a new assembly point for his unit at Genappe, near Brussels, in February 1945. Here he quickly sought out the co-operation of 21 Army Group and the U.S. 12th Army Group, as a result of which he was able to disperse a number of ‘field teams’ around likely hunting grounds, among them the Ruhr-Hartz mountains, the Westphalian Plain and Kiel. Yet the pace of the Allied advance often meant the unit found itself operating inside dangerous pockets of enemy resistance, but none of which ever kept Quill from keeping well forward in his command vehicle.
In early April the unit moved to Venlo on the east bank of the River Maas, and further specialists arrived to assist in the investigation into captured documents and hardware - one of them was heard to whisper that he was an atomic scientist. Two weeks later 30 A.U’s H.Q. was once again on the move, this time to Osnabruck, and in the coming weeks a number of important finds were made, not least on the unit’s subsequent arrival at Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. The former turned up one of Dr. Walter’s Walttherboot, a high-speed submarine which was fuelled by hydrogen peroxide, and the latter the hitherto unknown 50-knot hydrofoil. But it was at Kiel that 30 A.U. finally uncovered much of the secrecy surrounding the Third Reich’s military might.
Aware of the city’s potential importance to 30 A.U’s objectives, Quill had hastened to General Dempsey on the eve of the German surrender. Anxious that the enemy be allowed minimal time for sabotage, he asked for the General’s permission to enter the city ahead of the main Allied force. The General eventually agreed to the plan, but made it clear that no assistance would be forthcoming if 30 A.U. ran into trouble. In the event, most of the 40,000 enemy troops inside the battered city were more than ready to surrender, thereby allowing Quill and his men the opportunity to make a number of important arrests. Their biggest catch was Dr. Walther, who was picked up in his residence next door to the famous Waltherwerke complex. Added to which Quill’s men uncovered microfilms of all of his blue-prints and drawings, which had been hidden under the coal in his cellar. Meanwhile, another field team raced across Kile canal to Eckernforde, their haste being rewarded by examples of every enemy torpedo then in use, together with the plans of those yet to be put into manufacture.
Later, at Flensburg, Quill rushed to rescue one of his teams which had been apprehended by a group of senior enemy Naval officers. In his subsequent negotiations, the no-nonsense Colonel insisted that all details of research and development be handed over to his care. As one witness to these events later commented, ‘There followed a series of breathtaking discoveries, the average rate of finding new weapons for the first fortnight being about two a day’. Among them were a 25-knot, one-man midget submarine, a radio-controlled Hs. 293 glider bomb and the Blohm and Voss 143 jet-driven glider bomb. And more was to follow, another of Quill’s teams having sped southwards in time to capture the entire archive of the German Navy - this latter gold-mine was later passed to the control of Ian Fleming at Naval Intelligence.
At length, after many adventures and startling discoveries, 30 A.U. finally returned to the U.K. and was disbanded, ‘the sailors in jeeps’ having made a significant contribution to the war’s outcome and, equally important, to future development in the post-war era. As the Director of the Admiralty’s Torpedo and Mining Department later concluded, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the information obtained by 30 A.U. was both a material contribution towards winning the War, and also helped us to get well into the lead with various technical and scientific devices which all navies must have nowadays’. Quill was awarded the D.S.O., one of 38 won by the Royal Marines in the 1939-45 War, and the American Legion of Merit.
In the five years following the War, he commanded the R.M. Barracks at both Deal and Eastney, and was appointed an A.D.C. to H.M. King George VI. He also added a C.B.E. to his wartime accolades. Following his retirement, the Colonel pursued his interest in Horology, in which field he achieved a reputation that was second to none in this country. Author of the acclaimed and authoritative work, John Harrison: The Man Who Found Longitude, Quill died in December 1987, aged 90 years.
We were recently contacted by a relative of 'H' as he was known, and she has been kind enough to allow me to publish these photos of him.
Raymond Humphery Quill was born in May 1897, the son of Major-General Richard Quill, C.B., and was educated at Wellington and Cheltenham. Commissioned into the R.M.L.I. at about the time of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, and following a brief period of training, he served out in the Dardanelles and in France, in which latter theatre of war he was mentioned for his ‘zeal, initiative and courage ... and resource under fire’ by Lieutenant-Colonel C. Omaston, Commanding R.M.A. Anti-Aircraft Brigade. Quill spent the remainder of the War aboard the battleship Lord Nelson out in the Aegean and Caspian and was onetime a personal aide to the S.N.O. Piraeus.
Between the Wars he enjoyed further seagoing appointments and was appointed M.V.O. in 1935 for his services during the Duke of Gloucester’s visit to Australia and New Zealand, the same year in which he was advanced to Major. But in the period leading up to the renewal of hostilities he was increasingly employed by Naval Intelligence, the period 1937-39 seeing him employed as a Staff Officer (Intelligence) out in Singapore. Returning home in the latter year, he took up another intelligence post at the Admiralty, and in 1940 he accompanied the Royal Marines Expedition to Iceland, where he managed to prevent the enemy from destroying their papers and documents - an opening success in intelligence gathering that would set the pattern for his later wartime career in North-West Europe. First of all, however, he was posted to the Middle East as a Staff Officer (Intelligence), in which capacity he served until returning home in 1944.
30 Assault Unit, R.M.
Thus ensued his final wartime appointment as C.O. of 30 Assault Unit, R.M., the jeep-bound Commando which on occasion operated ahead of the advancing Allies in North-West Europe in order to surprise the enemy and capture valuable secret papers and weapons. Comprising two dozen R.N. and R.M. officers, and around 300 R.M. Commandos and ratings, 30 A.U. went onto achieve some notable successes, not least the seizure of the enemy’s Naval H.Q. in Paris, complete with a mass of paperwork, the capture at Kiel of Dr. Walter, the inventor of high-speed hydrogen peroxide engines for torpedoes and U-Boats, and the discovery in a remote Bavarian schloss of the archives of the German Navy dating back to 1870.
Quill first arrived in France in November 1944, and, following early success at the German Naval H.Q. in Paris, moved on to a new assembly point for his unit at Genappe, near Brussels, in February 1945. Here he quickly sought out the co-operation of 21 Army Group and the U.S. 12th Army Group, as a result of which he was able to disperse a number of ‘field teams’ around likely hunting grounds, among them the Ruhr-Hartz mountains, the Westphalian Plain and Kiel. Yet the pace of the Allied advance often meant the unit found itself operating inside dangerous pockets of enemy resistance, but none of which ever kept Quill from keeping well forward in his command vehicle.
In early April the unit moved to Venlo on the east bank of the River Maas, and further specialists arrived to assist in the investigation into captured documents and hardware - one of them was heard to whisper that he was an atomic scientist. Two weeks later 30 A.U’s H.Q. was once again on the move, this time to Osnabruck, and in the coming weeks a number of important finds were made, not least on the unit’s subsequent arrival at Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. The former turned up one of Dr. Walter’s Walttherboot, a high-speed submarine which was fuelled by hydrogen peroxide, and the latter the hitherto unknown 50-knot hydrofoil. But it was at Kiel that 30 A.U. finally uncovered much of the secrecy surrounding the Third Reich’s military might.
Aware of the city’s potential importance to 30 A.U’s objectives, Quill had hastened to General Dempsey on the eve of the German surrender. Anxious that the enemy be allowed minimal time for sabotage, he asked for the General’s permission to enter the city ahead of the main Allied force. The General eventually agreed to the plan, but made it clear that no assistance would be forthcoming if 30 A.U. ran into trouble. In the event, most of the 40,000 enemy troops inside the battered city were more than ready to surrender, thereby allowing Quill and his men the opportunity to make a number of important arrests. Their biggest catch was Dr. Walther, who was picked up in his residence next door to the famous Waltherwerke complex. Added to which Quill’s men uncovered microfilms of all of his blue-prints and drawings, which had been hidden under the coal in his cellar. Meanwhile, another field team raced across Kile canal to Eckernforde, their haste being rewarded by examples of every enemy torpedo then in use, together with the plans of those yet to be put into manufacture.
Later, at Flensburg, Quill rushed to rescue one of his teams which had been apprehended by a group of senior enemy Naval officers. In his subsequent negotiations, the no-nonsense Colonel insisted that all details of research and development be handed over to his care. As one witness to these events later commented, ‘There followed a series of breathtaking discoveries, the average rate of finding new weapons for the first fortnight being about two a day’. Among them were a 25-knot, one-man midget submarine, a radio-controlled Hs. 293 glider bomb and the Blohm and Voss 143 jet-driven glider bomb. And more was to follow, another of Quill’s teams having sped southwards in time to capture the entire archive of the German Navy - this latter gold-mine was later passed to the control of Ian Fleming at Naval Intelligence.
At length, after many adventures and startling discoveries, 30 A.U. finally returned to the U.K. and was disbanded, ‘the sailors in jeeps’ having made a significant contribution to the war’s outcome and, equally important, to future development in the post-war era. As the Director of the Admiralty’s Torpedo and Mining Department later concluded, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the information obtained by 30 A.U. was both a material contribution towards winning the War, and also helped us to get well into the lead with various technical and scientific devices which all navies must have nowadays’. Quill was awarded the D.S.O., one of 38 won by the Royal Marines in the 1939-45 War, and the American Legion of Merit.
In the five years following the War, he commanded the R.M. Barracks at both Deal and Eastney, and was appointed an A.D.C. to H.M. King George VI. He also added a C.B.E. to his wartime accolades. Following his retirement, the Colonel pursued his interest in Horology, in which field he achieved a reputation that was second to none in this country. Author of the acclaimed and authoritative work, John Harrison: The Man Who Found Longitude, Quill died in December 1987, aged 90 years.
Arctic Jackets
McMullon_ArcticJackets
RM Gates RM Swann
Arctic jackets Ursula Barbour
Ivor Taffy Jenkins(R) RM Charlie Andrews(L) Syd 'Tybby' Hollis (M)
Taken late 44 in the back garden of my Grandmothers house at 20 Rue de Charlroi, Genappe.
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XTroop
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Midgetsubs_Baltic
