![]() Young Michael was educated at Beaumont College, Old Windsor, before being commissioned and joining 9L. ![]() ![]() In the Second World War he was captured and, after the Italian Armistice, as Senior British Officer, on 10 minutes’ notice, he marched out the PoWs as a battalion from the camp at Fontanellato where they had been held, taking more than 600 men with him. His father, a gunner officer, was awarded his MC at Ypres in the First World War. Michael Graham de Burgh, the son of Colonel HG de Burgh, OBE, MC, was born in Norwich on June 11 1923. Not since the Battle of El Alamein had 9L inflicted such a devastating reverse on German armour. In the advance to Francolino and Borgo on the River Po under a full moon, the 9L tanks were silhouetted against the burning farmhouses and any movement brought a hail of armour-piercing shells.īy the morning, the regiment had reached Ferrara and the area was littered with German tanks – elements of 26 Panzer Division were so demoralised that they made their own tanks unserviceable. ![]() In April 1945, during the great offensive from the River Santerno, through the Argenta Gap and the advance to the River Po, the regiment was back in “tank country”, and together with units of the 4th Hussars, the London Irish Rifles and the Royal Horse Artillery, they acted as the exploitation force for 78 Division.ĭespite constant harassment by snipers, bazookas and Spandau fire, the squadrons were picking up so many prisoners that groups of 50 were left with a single rifleman to guard them. That winter, his regiment fought as infantry because the tanks could not operate effectively in mountainous terrain intersected with gullies and ravines, and in the treacherous conditions. Michael de Burgh, who has died aged 100, was believed to be the last surviving member of any antecedent regiment of the Royal Lancers who saw active service in the Second World War.ĭe Burgh joined A Squadron 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers (9L) in July 1943 and served throughout the last nine months of the Italian campaign in command of a troop of tanks he saw heavy fighting in September 1944 at San Savino in the attack on the German Gothic Line. ![]()
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