Lieutenant-Colonel E.J. Jerram
1/7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment

I suppose anti-climax was getting a hold on me. Lumps kept on coming to my throat. There was next to nothing left of my company … It was depressing to see the remnants of the [rest of] the battalion … They didn’t look more than a hundred . . . out of some 500 before the battle.

(Quoted in Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man, 353)

Born on 5 January 1903 in Wimbledon, Surrey, Edward Jenner Jerram was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1923. He was promoted to captain in 1935 and served as a company commander for the 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwicks in the Battle of France for which he earned the Military Cross.

“The Bosch jumped out into the fields on either side,” Jerram wrote of the enemy assault on 27 May, “throwing something alight under the lorries, which, with our . . . shells, soon caused a terrific fire amongst them and the barricade . . . Bullets started zipping about all over the place. Shells began to fall around and amongst us. A battle had started in earnest.” While Jerram managed to survive and get back to British lines, the battalion was overrun. A group of captured Royal Warwicks along with other POWs were executed by the Waffen-SS in the Wormhoudt massacre.

Jerram became second-in-command in the reformed 2nd Battalion, and was appointed commanding officer of the 2/7th Battalion in August 1941. He remained stationed in the United Kingdom until the start of the Normandy campaign. He succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel B.B. Walton of the 1/7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who had been promoted to 151st Infantry Brigade.

Jerram lead the 1/7th Royal Warwicks in North West Europe until the 59th Division was withdrawn and disbanded in August 1944. Afterwards, he was posted to be commandant of a training centre. After the end of the war in Europe, in July 1945, Jerram assumed command of his original unit, the 2nd Royal Warwicks. He retired from the army in 1952.

Jerram died on 9 December 1992 in Evenlode, Gloucestershire.