Lieutenant-Colonel John Sym
5th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders

I rather prided myself, at the time, on my ability at aircraft recognition and reassured the Brigadier, who was regarding them rather apprehensively, that they were Kittihawks. A moment later we were throwing ourselves on our faces as their bombs crashed uncomfortably near us. I still think they were Kittihawks but, although they turned back and headed for home over our lines, my reputation was lost.

(J.M. Sym, Personal Account of El Alamein) https://51hd.co.uk/accounts/colonel_john_sym_dso

Born in Edinburgh on 10 October 1907, John Munro Sym attended Loretto School and graduated from Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned with the Seaforth Highlanders in 1927. During the 1930s, he served with the 2nd Battalion on the North West Frontier in India and in Palestine and then with the 1st Battalion in Egypt. He was posted to the British Military Mission in Iraq in 1939 prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

In September 1942, Sym transferred to the 2nd Battalion after the removal of Lieutenant-Colonel A.R. Wilson in the North African theatre. Sym remained as second-in-command under Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Mackessack. During the Second Battle of El Alamein, Sym recalled listening to radio reports in rear headquarters, “I remained for a long time wondering what it was like up there in front in the thick of it, and felt bitterly disappointed that I was so narrowly missing my first real battle.”

On 31 October, he became acting brigade major with the 152nd Infantry Brigade, commanded by former 2nd Battalion CO, George Murray. “My memories of this night and the ensuring days are confused,” Sym reflected:

The two wireless sets and the telephone buzzed continuously, and as each call was for me I had little respite. Reports to be entered, demands for information, requests for support, all the communications from lower and higher formations, in addition to the ordinary routine matters of a Brigade Headquarters. I am glad that I had this experience during a battle. It gave me some insight to the trials of Staff Officers, and also the fascination of knowing what is going on all round, and to some extent directing the course of events over a larger field than is possible by direct personal command.

After Mackessack was wounded in December, the new commanding officer became Lieutenant-Colonel Rory Horne, formerly of the 6th Battalion. After the posting to brigade headquarters and later hospitalization in Cario, Sym resumed being the 2nd Battalion 2iC under Horne in April 1943. The battalion landed in Sicily three months later.

On 19/20 July 1943, the Germans captured Sym, Horne, two company commanders, the intelligence officer, and a platoon. While Horne and the others would be imprisoned in Germany, Sym managed to escape. After spending a month in a cave, he was recaptured by Italians and sent to a POW camp near Rome. He found sanctuary in the Vatican in the confusion after the Italian surrender in September. He rejoined the Allied forces with the liberation of Rome on 6 June 1944. Meanwhile, by that time, the 2nd Battalion, prepared to enter the new front in Western Europe.

Sym rejoined the 2nd Battalion in the Netherlands in October 1944 and resumed his duties as second-in-command. In January 1945, he succeeded long-serving Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Walford of the 5th Battalion, who had been in command since just after El Alamein two years earlier.

Scottish author and veteran Alastair Borthwick compared Walford and Sym, remarking that the latter “was of the same cut, conscientious, thorough, sparing himself nothing; but there the similarity ended.” Sym was meticulous about planning and cool in action but Borthwick speculated, “Yet after a battle—this is only an impression, but I have felt it strongly—he worried about the casualties, blaming each on himself and wondering if, had the plan been contrived differently, perhaps this or that man might have been spared.”

Commanding the 5th until the end of the war in Europe, Sym earned the D.S.O. for actions during the invasion of Germany:

Throughout this period his determination and boundless courage have been of the highest order. As 2 IC he was always in the forefront of the battle reconnitring suitable route for the fighting transport which, as a result, never failed to reach the unit with the minimum of delay. In the Reichswald while leading his battalion he was completely knocked out by a shell and slightly wounded but, on coming round he immediately continued to push on with his men under very heavy fire of all kinds.

During an enemy counterattack, Sym was taken prisoner a third time but managed to once again escape back to Allied lines. He continued a postwar army career and for a time commanded the 1st Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders until retirement in the late 1950s. He published a book on the Seaforth regimental history in 1962.

Sym died on 1 June 1980.