Lieutenant-Colonel Pickard Hall
1st Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (MG)

Pickard was one of the most delightful characters it has ever been my privilege to meet. As handsome in feature as in manners, he was tremendously popular with both officers and men … Another side to his character, which added to his charm, was his love of the “bizarre” and of doing those things which are out of the ordinary. This was no pose. The unusual was to him the spice of existence.

(The Die-Hards, June 1945, 61)

Born in 1910 and educated at Marlborough and the RMC, Sandhurst, John Pickard Hall was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1930. Overseas postings included Palestine, Egypt, and Singapore. According to one Middlesex officer, “he lived for a long period on detachment with his platoon as the uncrowned king of Nablus, a hotbed of Arab sedition and rebellion.” He returned home to be adjutant at the regimental depot in 1938.

While attached to the French Army with the Chasseurs Alpine, he qualified as a skier. He volunteered to serve in a special detachment to aid Finland after the Soviet invasion in 1940. With his skiing experience suited for the Winter War, he was made a platoon leader, but the mission was aborted before embarking due to Finland’s defeat.

He served as a staff liaison officer to the French Army during the Norway campaign, for which he earned the Croix de Guerre. The next four years were taken up by an appointment to the War Office and as an instructor for an Officer Cadet Training Unit.

He was second-in-command for the 8th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, which would be redesignated the 1st Battalion after the original had been destroyed in the Battle of Hong Kong. He was elevated to commanding officer of the 1st Middlesex in April 1944. The unit became the machine gun battalion for the 15th Scottish Division, which deployed to France three months later. He was killed in action on 8 February 1945 during the invasion of the Rhine. His obituary in the regimental journal, The Die-Hards, read:

Of his service in Normandy. Belgium and Holland. I am unable to write as I have no first-hand knowledge. But like all his friends, I have heard stories of his bravery, of how he would spend all his time visiting his forward platoons. He would appear during” the heaviest periods of enemy shelling and mortaring, absolutely cool and unperturbed, smoking his pipe and quietly giving words of encouragement. All this to the great alarm of everybody for his safety.