Home  |   The Great War  |   Second World War  |   Other Conflicts  |   Useful Links  |   Contact Us

 

2nd Lieutenant Francis Evelyn DU PRE (219958)
C Squadron, 3rd King’s Own Hussars Royal Armoured Corps Date of birth: 27th May 1912 Date of death: 13th November 1942 Died of wounds aged 30 Buried at Alexandria (Hadra) War Memorial Cemetery Plot 4 Row E Grave 9
Francis Evelyn Du Pre was born at Elham in Kent on the 27th of May 1912 the only son of Lieutenant Colonel Francis James Du Pre DSO, 3rd Hussars, and Dorothy Margaret (nee Kitts) Du Pre of 39, Manor Road, Folkestone in Kent, later of 7, Sandrock Road, Tunbridge Wells in Kent. He was educated at Summer Fields School in Oxford from January 1922 and at Lancing College where he was in Heads House from September 1925 to July 1930. He gained his School Certificate in 1927 and Higher Certificate in 1930. He was a member of the Officer Training Corps where he achieved Certificate A in 1929 and was appointed as a House Captain in 1930. Also in 1930 he came 7th in the College Five Mile cross country race. On leaving school he became a solicitor before becoming a civil servant at the War Department. He lived at Lewisham. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Tank Regiment on the 6th of December 1941. In October 1942, the British planned to attack General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps at El Alamein and the 3rd King's Own Hussars would support the New Zealand Division in the early stages of the battle. On the night of the 23rd/24th of October the New Zealanders moved forward through two known minefields and successfully gained the Miteiriya Ridge. The Yeomanry tanks which had led them in the attack had lost heavily on a third, unknown minefield and soon after daybreak the 3rd King's Own Hussars were called forward to bolster the New Zealand defences by digging their tanks in on the ridge in the "hull down" position. After a day under German shellfire they withdrew at dusk to a position half a mile away. They were then ordered to move forward under the cover of darkness to a feature called El Whiska, 1,000 yards in front of the ridge. In the event the feature was too strongly held and C Squadron suffered heavily after a "nightmare" passage through another minefield. By daybreak on the 25th of October the Hussars found themselves in a deep depression between the two ridges. For most of the day they exchanged fire with the enemy with a lull at around noon when the men had a "brew up" behind their tanks, At 5pm it was decided that no forward movement would be possible without a full scale attack and C Squadron began to withdraw. As they passed through a gap in the minefield they were heavily shelled, killing Captain Hector Chadwick and badly injuring Francis Du Pre who later died of his wounds.

Heads House