Lieutenant-Colonel C.G. Lipscomb
4th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry

Lippy was outstanding in many difficult situations and none more so than when the remnants of 5 DCLI after a terrible time in Cornwall Wood on Hill 112, came back into our positions. He rallied them and sensing a crisis drew his pistol and shouted “I’ll shoot the first Somerset who goes back”

(Capt. J Majendie quoted in Martin Windrow, The Soldier’s Story, 113)

Born on 23 December 1907 in Margam, Glamorgan, Wales, Christopher Godfrey Lipscomb was commissioned with the Somerset Light Infantry after graduating from RMC, Sandhurst in 1928. He was attached to the Nigerian Regiment, Royal West African Frontier Force from 1933 to September 1939. From 1941 to 1944, he was chief Instructor at an Officer Cadet Training Unit and then commandant at the divisional battle school.

 By D-Day, he was GSO 1 and liaison officer with 21st Army Group until 24 June 1944 when he was appointed commanding officer of 4th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. Lieutenant-Colonel W.S.C. Curtis had injured himself jumping off his landing craft into the water when the battalion arrived in France with the 43rd Wessex Division.

He commanded the 4th SLI throughout the Normandy and North West Europe campaigns. He earned the D.S.O. for leading an assault across the Seine: “though losing every one of his original company commanders and most of his junior leaders, Lieut-Col Lipscomb has always, by his personal example and great courage, maintained the highest tradition of his Regiment.” He earned a D.S.O. Bar for actions in February 1945. He published a regimental history in 1946.

Postwar appointments included the 19th Infantry Brigade from 1950 to 1953, commandant of the senior officers’ school until 1957 and then command of the Hanover District as part of the British Army of the Rhine. Following a final posting as chief of Joint Services Liaison Organisation in the BAOR, he retired from the army in 1961.

Lipscomb died on 16 January 1982 in Wroughton, Wiltshire.