Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Daniels MC (15 July 1923 – 27 April 2003) was awarded the Military Cross for his ‘exemplary actions during fierce fighting’ at the Battle of Cloppenburg in 1945, played rugby for Wasps RFC after World War II and later became Chief Executive of the William Press Group that he led to become a FTSE 100 company in the mid-1970s and early 1980s.
[1] The 7th Battalion landed on the Arromanches beaches on 22 June 1944 and ‘suffered severe losses in the Norman bocage with its undulating fields, woods and high hedges which greatly favoured the defenders’.
[1] In August, the British ‘broke out of the bridgehead and the 7th Hampshires took part in the action to capture the Mount Pincon feature, the highest point in Normandy and strongly defended by the enemy’.
[1] In the fierce fighting which ensued, Daniels was severely wounded in the face and head but refused to leave his platoon until he had reorganised it and handed it over to his sergeant.
[1][4] On 9 September Daniels entered a liberated Brussels with 7 Hampshires and fought with the Battalion in a succession of actions including Operation Market Garden and the Battle of Reichswald.