Private Robert Sidney Courthope BAKER (5672648)
7th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry

Date of birth: 18th July 1909
Date of death: 2nd July 1944

Killed in action aged 34
Buried at Secqueville-En-Bessin War Cemetery Plot II Row B Grave 3
He was born at Bangalore on the 18th of July 1909 the elder son of George Frederick Baker, merchant, and Edith Violet (nee Hawkins) of Calcutta and Horsham, later of Broadway House, Yeovil, Somerset. He was christened at Bangalore on the 1st of September 1909.

He was educated at the Junior King’s School from September 1920 and at the King's School Canterbury from January 1923 to July 1926. He was known as Bob.

After leaving school he tried his hand, for a short time, at farming in Yorkshire. He then studied gas engineering at Ashton-Under-Lyme before studying the tea industry in London. In 1935 he joined a tea estate belonging to the Katary Tea Company at Nilgris in India.

During the war he enlisted in the 7th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry and landed with them in Normandy on the 24th of June 1944 as part of 43rd Infantry Brigade.

By the 2nd of July 1944 they were in positions near the village of Verson in the Odon. That morning Major Sydney Charles Wayman Young led a Company patrol supported by a section of carriers, 3 inch mortars and anti-tank guns set out for Verson and Jemeaux in order to ascertain enemy troop dispositions. They formed a screen and searched the village of Verson, firing at snipers in the church tower with their PIATs. Young then ordered a platoon, under Lieutenant P.A. Eves, to go forward to the crossroads at Jumeaux. They reconnoitred an area deep into enemy positions between Carpiquet and the south of the Odon.

During this mission the patrol ran into fierce enemy opposition and had to be extricated under heavy machine gun fire. Lieutenant Eves withdrew his men under a screen of smoke and supporting Bren gun fire, provided by the carriers. The rest of the patrol then made its way back to their original positions.

Major Young and Lieutenant Eves were both awarded the Military Cross for their actions that day.

Casualties were one dead and three wounded, Robert Baker was the man killed.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Yeovil.

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