Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A well-documented and highly impressive C.B.E., Second World War “behind enemy lines” D.S.O., North Africa operations M.C. group of ten awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel T. “Sailor” Kitcat, Royal Artillery, late Royal Navy, who was parachuted into Macedonia and Malaya with S.O.E. missions in 1944-45 and assisted U.S. special forces in the Korean War

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, C.B.E. (Civil) Commander’s 2nd type neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, in its Toye, Kenning & Spencer, London case of issue; Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R., 1st issue, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse of the suspension bar officially dated ‘1945’; Military Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse officially dated ‘1942’; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star, clasp, 8th Army; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45, M.I.D. oak leaf; General Service 1918-62, 2 clasps, Palestine 1945-48, Malaya (Lt. Col., D.S.O., M.C., R.A.), surname spelt ‘Kilcat’; Korea 1950-53 (Lt. Col., D.S.O., M.C., R.A.); U.N. Korea, mounted as worn, the second with slightly chipped reverse centre-piece, otherwise generally good very fine (10) £6000-8000

C.B.E. London Gazette 12 June 1965.

D.S.O. London Gazette 9 August 1945.

M.C. London Gazette 23 April 1942. The original recommendation - reduced from a D.S.O. - states:

‘On 2 February 1942, a battery with some infantry was guarding the road some 12 miles west of Carmusa. During the morning Major Kitcat’s battery was sent up to reinforce this force. A few minutes after arriving near the area German lorried infantry were seen approaching down the road. Their rapid advance over-ran the battery and infantry already there in spite of being hotly engaged. Major Kitcat had very quickly got his battery into action and gave all possible assistance by fire to the force, but the German advance continued and a few tanks and armoured cars began to outflank them on the left. From then on the battery with no escort whatever except two anti-tank guns, was forced to withdraw down the line of the road. With great skill and steadiness, Major Kitcat withdrew by troops for twelve miles, six separate troop positions being occupied. Constantly threatened and machine-gunned from the flank and with large bodies of lorried infantry advancing on his front, he inflicted the maximum of damage and delay in each position before withdrawing. By the time the battery reached the main position all ammunition had been fired - no guns had been lost and the enemy were so delayed that they were unable to press home an attack that afternoon.’

Mention in despatches London Gazette 15 December 1942.

Terence “Sailor” Kitcat was born in the East End of London in July 1908, the son of a clergyman, and was educated at Bradfield College (Junior House) prior to entering Dartmouth as a Naval Cadet. Appointed a Midshipman in 1925, he enjoyed seagoing appointments aboard H.M. Ships Marlborough, Tiger and Hood, prior to specialising as a Navigator in submarines. But in 1930, having seen an Army horsemanship display at Wembley, he decided a career in the Gunners would be more ‘fun’, and duly obtained a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant, R.A. in February 1931. As it transpired, he was a natural and exceptional horseman, and between 1934-39 he served at the R.H.A’s Equitation School at Weedon, where he participated in much steeplechasing and show jumping - in fact he was considering leaving the Army to pursue a full time career as an amateur National Hunt jockey when the outbreak of hostilities intervened.

Posted to North Africa in the temporary rank of Major, he commanded 11th Field Battery, 1st Field Regiment, R.A., a component of 4th Indian Division, 13 Corps, and won the M.C. for his great skill and courage in an action west of Carmusa on 2 February 1942 (see above related recommendation). He was also mentioned in despatches for the period November 1941 to April 1942, and saw action in Syria, while attached to the Free French, greatly impressing the latter with his battlefield exploits, not least on the occasion when he had to run across an open plain, exposed to heavy fire, to deliver a message - ‘He found that his every movement was greeted with a hail of bullets. He dashed, zigzagged, dived and sprinted from boulder to boulder until no cover was left. He finally ran like hell until he met up with the Free French who had been observing his movements. Their officer said, “Est ce que vous etes le monsieur qui fait le gymnastique?” ’

With the close of the North Africa campaign in 1943 - and having been wounded at Alam Halfa in August 1942 - Kitcat confessed in a letter home to his mother that he might shortly be promoted to Second-in-Command of his R.A. Regiment and end up with an appointment ‘counting spoons in the Mess’, and that accordingly he had ‘struck out in a new line, interesting, exciting and unorthodox - can’t say more ... You will not hear from me for some time’. In point of fact he had been accepted by S.O.E’s Force 133 at Cairo, and, having attended a crash course in parachuting, was dropped into Macedonia in January 1944 with a fellow ex-R.A. officer, Captain R. C. “Paul” Pike, to rummage up some enthusiasm among local anti-fascist partisans. Their area of operations was occupied by pro-Nazi Bulgarian troops, ‘a tough lot’, and between acts of sabotage and ambushes, the pair of them - and their partisans (a.k.a. “Kitcat’s Dragoons”) - spent a good deal of time on the run in the mountains. Certainly capture was not worth contemplating, the Bulgarian military not being adverse to sending the occasional S.O.E. operative over to the Gestapo at Sofia - such being the fate of at least two members of another S.O.E. mission, “Operation Claridges”. No doubt Kitcat feared as much when his colleague, Captain Pike, was wounded and captured in an ambush, but on learning that he had been taken to a hospital at Drama, made haste to his rescue. Pike’s subsequent letter to Kitcat’s mother, dated 12 November 1944, takes up the story:

‘As I think you know, I was shot in the leg and unfortunately taken P.O.W. and ended up in hospital at Drama. Terence decided to rescue me. His plan cut and dried, he dressed up as a ragged civilian and wandered into the town full of Bulgar troops. Imagine my surprise when the Greek woman who used to wash the floor of my room smuggled to me a note from Terence under the eyes of the Bulgar guard who also lived in my room. The rough contents of the note being “Am within minutes of you, arrange contact, expect me anytime in any guise, yours till hell freezes, Sailor.” I was absolutely horrified and scared stiff - this all seemed too much like Phillips Oppenheim or John Buchan. It was a little too thrilling! I managed to scribble him a note saying it was impossible to move me owing to my condition. I didn’t know at this time that he had a car ready to take me to the foothills. Poor Sailor, after his brave and daring plan had to leave and go back to the hills, but at least he had found out a great deal about the concentration of enemy troops. I know this sounds very much like a Buchan story, but I assure you every word of it is true. Mrs. Kitcat, Terence has been, and is, my greatest friend and has risked his life to save mine on more than one occasion. That I cannot repay, but when I am fit I hope to have the honour to serve under his command once again.’

Ironically, Pike was released two weeks after Kitcat’s attempted rescue, when Bulgaria abandoned its pro-Nazi stance as Soviet forces reached the country’s borders in August 1944.

At the end of the year, Kitcat was transferred from Cairo to S.O.E. in the Far East, and was dropped by parachute into Japanese-held Malaya to fight alongside elements of Force 136’s “Anti-Japanese Army”, and he remained similarly employed in the jungle until the end of hostilities in the Far East. He was awarded the D.S.O.

Unusually, perhaps, Kitcat’s post-war career was no less adventurous, for, having become a competent skier with Italian Alpini troops in 1946-47, while on attachment as a Liaison Officer, he was selected in the following year to represent Great Britain in the Olympics in the showjumping team, an aspiration curtailed at the last minute by a broken leg. He therefore elected to join a War Office experimental team destined for the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, where he excelled himself in testing equipment in temperatures of minus-40 degrees, challenging employment that was ended by the onset of hostilities in Korea in 1950 - a conflict that resulted in him being attached to U.S. special forces on intelligence gathering duties. According to an accompanying obituary, he sailed a junk up the coast of Korea to make contact with a series of observation posts on the islands off the mainland, coming under shellfire on at least one occasion from Chinese batteries.

Having attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in November 1951, Kitcat next joined the “special duties branch” of the Foreign Office, and to begin with, at least, commanded a secret establishment at Gosport dedicated to training personnel in covert operations. He subsequently operated “in the Field” in Iraq in 1953, training Kurdish guerillas, in Turkey in 1955 where he observed Soviet missile launches on the Armenian border, and in the Far East 1956-63, including Malaya. He was latterly employed at Singapore as a Liaison Officer with the Defence Staff, work that resulted in his award of the C.B.E., which he received at an investiture at Buckingham Palace in March 1966, and finally retired from the F.O. in 1967, following attendance as a supervisor at parachute training establishments in India.

In retirement, Kitcat remained as active as ever, enjoying yoga, yachting, golf and skiing - his passion for the latter pursuit led to a broken pelvis (“I knew something was wrong, I felt all loose”), but he gained appointment as an instructor with the British Association of Ski Instructors, became an Honorary Member in 1985, and enjoyed many winters on the slopes in Austria (as a “Silver Member” of the Arlberg Club) and in the Pyrenees. He was also an accomplished artist, his work being exhibited by Grosvenor Galleries in Mayfair. But for all of his skills and achievements he remained devoid of any affectation or pretension - when invited to a formal dinner by the Admiral and Flag Officer, Plymouth, he pitched up in a pair of jeans and stole the show.

A glimpse of the Colonel in his final days - he died in November 2003, aged 95 years - is to be found in his Times obituary:

‘He became a familiar figure in the town [Dartmouth], in particular when arthritis obliged him to hobble about with a pair of Austrian walking poles. When skin cancer resulted in the amputation of an ear, a realistic prosthesis provided him with a trick he was unable to resist. As he became deaf, he would pull off the false ear, hold it towards the speaker and say: “Speak up please.” Not surprisingly perhaps, he was unmarried.’

Sold with a large quantity of original documentation, including C.B.E. warrant, dated 12 June 1965, professionally mounted on card; D.S.O. warrant, dated 9 August 1945; M.I.D. certificate, dated 15 December 1942; his R.N. Record of Service and “Midshipman’s Journal”, 15 September 1925 to 5 July 1928, this latter a particularly good example, with profuse illustration (ships, plans, maps, etc.); Officer’s Record of Service, Army Book 439 (2); a wartime typed account of the action at Carmusa, February 1942, and related carbon copy recommendation for his M.C.; War Office letter notifying the recipient’s mother of his wounds, dated 11 September 1942; a letter of thanks to Kitcat from a Greek Colonel of Artillery ‘for the so important services you have rendered the Greek cause’, dated at Drama, 13 November 1944; Captain R. C. Pike’s original letter to Mrs. Kitcat, describing her son’s attempt to rescue him, dated 12 November 1944 (part of which is quoted above); a fascinating file with numerous enclosures, several of a “Top Secret” nature, concerning Kitcat’s work in the 1950s, not least “Operation Pampero”, the clandestine observation of Soviet missile launches; and another similar, appertaining to his mission in Iraq in 1953; assorted G.B. passports (4); a superb run of “career” photograph albums (17), commencing with family scenes pre-war, via the R.N. and R.H.A., including excellent equestrian scenes, to post-war subject matter, not least albums dedicated to his time in the Canadian Arctic in the late 1940s and beyond, together with another 200 or 300 unmounted images; a “Spirit of Resistance” certificate, Special Forces Club 1946-96, via the Queen Mother, the Club’s Patron; several skiing certificates and much besides, such as a copy of an amusing letter addressed to 10 Downing Street, dated 2 May 1984, in which the Colonel describes the appalling facilities awaiting the traveller at Harwich (‘So, what’yer mate [Mrs. Thatcher], could you with your flair for bashing heads together, bash?’); also sold with several related artefacts, among them his R.H.A. Officer’s cross-belt pouch, and a silver equestrian trophy of a horse, with engraved plaque, on a wooden base.