Thomas A. Bird
Major Thomas Arthur Bird DSO, MC & Bar (11 August 1918 – 9 August 2017) was a distinguished British soldier and architect whose inspirational command of the anti-tank company (‘S’ Company) of 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, at Outpost Snipe during the Second Battle of El Alamein helped destroy the armoured counter-attack of General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
He remains the only soldier to have witnessed two Victoria Cross actions, that of Second Lieutenant George Ward Gunn of 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery (posthumously at Sidi Rezegh in 1941) and that of Colonel Victor Buller Turner, at Snipe.
His elder brother Edward was killed whilst serving in the 1st Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, at Calais on 25 May, 1940, while trying to rescue wounded men trapped on a lorry whose driver had been shot.
In September 1939, while skiing in Switzerland he received a telegram from his regiment to return home as war had been declared by the Chamberlain government against Nazi Germany.
He was in the vanguard of Combeforce (led by Col John Combe of 11th Hussars) at the Battle of Beda Fomm, which dashed across 100 miles of desert to Sidi Saleh on the coast road (7 February 1941) and captured the Italian 10th Army of 20,000 (including 216 guns and 100 tanks) commanded by General Bergonzoli (‘Electric Whiskers’).
General Richard O'Connor, commanding 7th Armoured Division called it ‘a complete victory as none of the enemy escaped.’ In early 1942 Rommel’s Afrika Korps turned the tide of battle; he had reached Sollum and was besieging Tobruk.
As the Rifle Brigade history notes of ‘Jock Columns’; ‘they learnt to penetrate areas dominated by the enemy…to make deadly and damaging thrusts…against his supply lines.’ Bird carried out numerous night patrols.
On the night of June 7/8 Bird brought in a column of 25 Royal Army Service Corps ammunition trucks with an RB escort through German lines and minefields, a hazardous operation in the dark.
The Légionnaires were delighted to see these new weapons, and in Bir Hakeim gleefully pointed out targets ‘even though this brought down fire…’ Bird went to see Koenig in his dugout, who grudgingly thanked him for the supplies but said it wasn’t enough and he was going to surrender anyway.
In the event Koenig, his English driver (and mistress) Susan Travers and about 2,500 Free French did not surrender, but fought their way out on 10/11 June, the additional ammunition allowing time to plan the break-out.
During the precipitate retreat across the Egyptian frontier and beyond, Bird and 2RB of 7th Motor Brigade had ranged far behind the German lines, alone, unsupported, at great distances from the rest of the Army, always on the move, destroying tanks and guns and transport – and delaying Rommel’s pursuit.
Bird’s unit had been ‘among the first to meet the enemy on the 26th of May, had been the last to withdraw, the last through the wire, and, 'in a collection of vehicles which would have disgraced a circus, were the last to reach Alamein,’ as the Regimental history records.
The First Battle of El Alamein (July 1–27, 1942) ended in stalemate after a series of thrusts and counter-attacks by both sides, British attacks being hampered by poor infantry/armour co-ordination.
‘The more I thought about it the less I liked it – how were we going to extricate ourselves?’ Bird ‘interpreted’ the orders and made a raid on the nearest outpost (‘across 2,700 yards of open ground in brilliant moonlight’, as the citation states), to ‘see what we could capture’, arranging for 4th RHA to shell it while his own Brens gave covering fire from a flank.
All went well…’ The citation continues: ‘100 yards short of the objective a wire fence was encountered, which he negotiated under intense fire, and then took his patrol in with great gallantry and determination, overrunning three posts and capturing two officers and fifteen other ranks.
The situation’s so bad that two officers of ‘S’ Company [Bird and one of his platoon commanders, Lt Jack Toms] try to effect a re-distribution of what remains by jeep.
One bullet amongst the ammo on board and the lot would go sky-high.’[11] After recovering from his wounds at Snipe, he was asked by Field Marshall Archibald Wavell, then Commander-in-Chief India, to be his ADC and Comptroller.
In a letter of 24 February 1943 Wavell wrote to Gen O’Connor (then a POW in Italy) that he had a new ADC ‘who was with my boy at Winchester; his name is Bird and he has been wounded three times and has got a DSO and two Military Crosses so he deserves a bit of a rest from the desert.’ On Wavell being asked to replace Lord Linlithgow as Viceroy in June 1943, Bird returned to his battalion – briefly acting as ADC to General Auchinleck (when he replaced Wavell as C-in-C India) and as ADC to General Sir Henry (‘Jumbo’) Wilson (then C-in-C Middle East Command) for the Cairo Conference (Sextant - November 22-26), where he met Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek, and learnt the date of D-Day.
Perhaps his major country house, and a foray into the grandiose, is Lushhill in Wiltshire (1966), built for Captain Fred Barker in Regency style, for whom he had already designed a stud farm.
Bird collected modern paintings, including works by John Piper, Fred Uhlman, Anthony Gross and Felix Kelly.
Bird appeared in many articles and books, including a Financial Times profile entitled ‘The Modest Face of Heroism’ (1992), and a novel in which he is the hero (‘Killing had become second nature to Bird…’).
[15] Bird retired in 1985 ‘when bricks went metric’ as he put it, although he did the occasional design for a friend, like the millennium folly he built for Sir Alistair Horne in Turville, Buckinghamshire, and he never stopped drawing and sketching.
