Lieutenant-Colonel M. Crawford
8th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (MG)

As we got over London bridge and into the city more people about and when we got to the East End, such places as East Ham, East Sheen etc there was the most wonderful demonstration by the people of London, all the poor people rushing out giving us tea, buns, potato chips, cigarettes and soap … It was very touching and made me feel that the spirit of the Country is very good at heart and that one should not believe what the Daily Mirror writes.

(Quoted in Ben Kite, Stout Hearts: the British and Canadians in Normandy 1944, 321)

Born on 9 July 1901 in Cork, Ireland, Mervyn Crawford was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1921. He was posted to the Far East, serving in Shanghai in the late 1920s and in Hong Kong in the late 1930s. By 1938, he had been promoted to major and took command of the 1/8th Middlesex Regiment in May 1942. The next year, it was redesignated the 8th Battalion, the machine gun unit attached to the 43rd Wessex Division.

The battalion embarked for France in late June 1944. As the convoy approached the coast, Crawford observed: “when we arrived in the middle of the Navy, battleships, cruisers, monitors, destroyers. All engaged on shelling the Huns, drawn up like a Spithead Review. A most impressive spectacle. There is no doubt that we must have complete supremacy in the air. Sailed right through the fleet.”

As a divisional machine gun unit, command was usually decentralized to companies assigned to support infantry operations. However, by his “personal help supervision and encouragement” in forward areas under fire, Crawford earned the D.S.O. He also witnessed the heavy emotional strain on those under his command. In his diary, Crawford related an interview with one platoon leader: “it was very trying, he was in an awful state in tears, most difficult experience as I felt very sorry for the poor fellow. However decided he was no good to risk the lives of his platoon with any longer, so although I told him to stick it, I promised [the company commander] I would get a relief up to him before nightfall.”

After the end of the war, he commanded the 1st Middlesex Regiment in Hong Kong until 1949, after which he retired from the army. Crawford died on 29 July 1977 in Dunscore, Dumfries and Galloway.