Teddy Gueritz

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was a midshipman on the cruiser HMS Cumberland. The ship was refitting in the Falkland Islands at the start of the Battle of the River Plate but hurriedly rejoined the squadron commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood. The subsequent blockade resulted in the scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee.[13]

On 6 June 1944, Gueritz went ashore on Sword at 08:00 as the third most senior member of the beachmaster party. His immediate superior, Commander Rowley Nichols was badly wounded, and the army liaison officer Lieutenant-Colonel D V H Board was killed almost immediately. This left Gueritz alone with the task of marshalling all the troops coming ashore, organising the landing craft and maintaining contact with the naval forces offshore. He was wearing a blue-painted helmet and a red scarf, and his sole weapon was a blackthorn walking stick.[13]

Gueritz's immediate task was to solve the problem of vehicles becoming stuck in the soft sand, and to start getting men through the exits being cleared through the minefields and barbed wire by flail tanks. To add to his problems, a further brigade came ashore at 0930, only to find that high winds were driving the tide higher than expected, reducing the space available on the beach and pushing the landing craft on to the explosive obstacles left by the Germans. Despite all this by the evening of D-Day 30,000 troops, hundreds of vehicles and tons of ammunition and other supplies had been landed and moved through the beach area.[13]

Gueritz continued his work for 19 days then, fortunately just after he had put his helmet back on, he was struck in the head by a shell fragment. Initially the seriousness of his wound was not realised, and it was only when he collapsed while he was being treated for a minor hand injury that doctors discovered that the back of his skull had been crushed. Evacuated to the United Kingdom, he was operated on at Southampton General Hospital. John Richardson, the surgeon who saved Gueritz's life, later became president of the General Medical Council and was created a life peer.[13]

After the war Gueritz became second-in-command of HMS Saumarez, and it was due to the damage control procedures that he put in place that the ship was not lost during the Corfu Channel Incident in 1946. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 16 April 1949,[16] and to commander on 31 December 1953.[17] He served on the staff of General Sir Hugh Stockwell during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Within the seaman specialism, he was promoted to captain on 30 June 1959[18] on appointment as Deputy Director of the Royal Naval Staff College.[19] He joined the Naval Staff at the Admiralty in 1961, attended Imperial Defence College in 1964 and became Captain of the Fleet for the Far East Fleet in 1965.[19] He went on to be Director of Defence Plans (Navy) in 1967, Director of the Joint Warfare Staff at the Ministry of Defence in 1968 and President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich in 1968.[19] His last appointment was as Commandant of the Joint Warfare Establishment in 1970 before he retired on 15 January 1973.[20]