Captain Terence Aldridge Wilson BOARDMAN (134108)
328th Battery, 99th Light Anti Aircraft Regiment Royal Artillery

Date of birth: 25th April 1912
Date of death: 10th July 1943

Killed in action aged 31
Buried at Syracuse War Cemetery Plot II Row G Grave 9
Terence Aldridge Wilson Boardman was born in Eire on the 25th of April 1912 the only son of Alfred Edward Boardman and Maud Alice (nee Wilson) Boardman of 3 Orme Court, London W2.

He was educated at Lancing College where he was in Manor House from January 1926 to December 1929. On leaving school he qualified as a solicitor and became a partner in Deacon & Co of 2 St Helens, London EC3. The partnership was dissolved by mutual consent on the 31st of May 1939 and he went to work for J.S. Crook & Co.

He was married in London in 1937 to Phyllis May (nee Gillespie); they lived at Elm Cottage, Brockham Green, Betchworth in Surrey and they had a son Barry, born on the 3rd of April 1943.

Following the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the army in 1939 as Sapper 2058026 and was posted to the 332nd Company, Royal Engineers. He was later posted to an Officer Training Unit before being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Queen's Regiment on the 2nd of June 1940. He was promoted to Lieutenant on the 22nd of December 1941 and on the 1st of June 1942 he transferred to the 99th Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery where he later became their Adjutant. He was promoted to Acting Captain on the 4th of April 1943.

In March 1943 the Commanding Officer of the 99th Light Anti Aircraft Regiment was called to Cairo to be briefed for the planned invasion of Sicily. He was informed that his regiment would land early on the first day and that he was to place his guns to protect the beaches from enemy air attack.

On the 4th of April the regiment moved to Suez and went into camp at Quassissin where they began equipping and training for the invasion. On the 29th of June 1943 they embarked at Suez for the invasion and arrived at Port Said the following day where they waited at anchor for four days as the rest of the force gathered. They then sailed for Malta and on to Sicily.
D-Day was to be the 10th of July. The plan called for the 327th Battery to land at first light, shortly after the assault infantry had gone ashore, and for 304th Battery to come ashore by midday.

At 01.15 hours on the morning of the 10th of July 1943 a reconnaissance party disembarked from HMT "Devonshire" onto landing craft and began the four mile run to "Green Beach" at Avola on the Sicilian coast; they were due to land at 03.45 hours. The sea was choppy and all ranks were thoroughly soaked on the run in. Two to three miles offshore they were forced to wait some two hours as the timetable for the landing had fallen behind and it was 03.15 before they resumed their run in. The reconnaissance party landed at 04.15 where they discovered that enemy resistance on the beach had been weak but that the infantry were meeting stiffer opposition on the Avola road inland. At 06.15 the main part of the regiment began to come ashore and at 06.45 the beach was shelled with 150mm shells fired from an enemy battery further up the beach which had not been taken.

One of the shells hit a landing craft which had just come ashore killing Terrance Boardman and wounding the Commanding Officer of the 327th Battery, Major A.B.C. Dickinson, along with 2nd Lieutenant G.E. Fisher-Fleming and the Regimental Chaplain, the Reverend A.H. Bull.

By 8am the enemy battery had been silenced by fire from the destroyer HMS Snipe.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Brockham Green

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