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Brig Grismond Davies-Scourfield

Edward Grismond Beaumont Davies-Scourfield was born on August 2 1918 at Patching, Sussex, and educated at Winchester. He passed out of Sandhurst with the Kings Medal and the Anson Memorial Sword, and was commissioned into the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, in 1938 and in May 1940 Davies-Scourfield, a platoon commander in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, took part in the four days of intense street fighting at Calais. As the riflemen were forced to withdraw from the outer perimeter into the town, they were ordered to defend their positions at all costs to the last round and the last man. Following a report that his battalion HQ had been surrounded, Davies-Scourfield organised a rescue party. As they charged down the street with fixed bayonets, uttering bloodcurdling cries, they turned a corner to find their CO and adjutant, who asked them what on earth they thought they were doing. After the Germans forces captured the docks, Brigadier Gris Davies-Scourfield was cut off from his company HQ, and holding a block of houses under constant bombardment from close-range mortar and machine-gun fire, Davies-Scourfield was trying to contact the other platoons when he was hit in the arm, side and head and lost consciousness and was captured and after hospitalisalion was sent to Posen. He was sent as a prisoner to a series of transit camps and then to Laufen, on the Austro-Bavarian border. Davies-Scourfield was awarded an MC for his actions at Calaise. Davies-Scourfield took part in digging an escape tunnel and was given six weeks solitary confinement when it was discovered. He was then moved to Fort VIII, a camp near Posen (Poznan). In May 1941 he escaped in a rubbish cart and hid for 10 days in a box room in a flat. On the way to Lodz in a pony cart, questions addressed to him in Polish or German were met with a lolling head and gaping mouth as he played the role of a half-wit. After crossing into German-occupied Poland, he walked to Warsaw. He was harboured by a Mrs M of the Polish underground until February 1942, when he moved to Cracow with some Army comrades and two secret service agents. Davies-Scourfield was arrested on a train to Vienna, when his papers were found to be forged, and returned to Cracow before being taken to Colditz. At one of the roll calls an embarrassed German officer announced that, following an order from Hitler, he was asking for volunteers who were prepared to devote their skills towards building the New Europe. To his astonishment a French officer stepped forward and said that he was willing to give his services, adding that the more work he was given the better. Asked his profession, the Frenchman replied: An undertaker. He was arrested and led away to the cooler to loud cheering from his comrades. In September 1943, after many months of planning, Davies-Scourfield, encouraged by reports that the guards did not usually stick their bayonets into the packaging from the parcels office, concealed himself in a handcart under a pile of straw and cardboard. The cart was tiny and he said afterwards that, with his legs up by his ears, he felt like an oven-ready chicken. He was wheeled from the office on the prisoners courtyard to the cellar of the sergeants mess on the outer courtyard and tossed into a pile of rubbish. Under his dungarees, he was wearing a German corporals uniform and a civilian suit under that. Opening the door with an imitation key, he passed several German soldiers on his way to a wicket gate which he opened with another key and slipped into the park. As soon as he was clear of the castle, he shed his German uniform, skirted the town and, using the forest as cover, walked 10 miles to Bad Lausich, where he took a train to Leipzig. The station there closed at midnight, so he had to sleep in the cold under some bushes. The next morning Davies-Scourfield headed west for the Dutch border. But after leaving the train at Hildesheim, he aroused the suspicions of a ticket collector and decided to walk 10 miles to Elze and catch the train for Osnabruck from there. On the way he was stopped by two policemen on motorcycles and arrested for possessing false papers. He was handed over to the military and returned to Colditz, where he remained until the camp was liberated by the Americans in April 1945. He was mentioned in dispatches. After the war, Davies-Scourfield served in Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus and Ghana. He commanded the 3rd Green Jackets from 1960 to 1962, and retired from the Army in 1973. He was a Deputy Lieutenant from 1984, and appointed MBE in 1951 and CBE in 1966. His wartime memoirs, In Presence of My Foes, were published in 1991. Brigadier Gris Davies-Scourfield, sadly died 26th November 2006, aged 88.