Lieutenant-Colonel Roy Harrison
1st Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment

Before joining the Battalion, I went to a Transit Camp … and found myself sharing a tent with Lt Col Roy Harrison – who was on his way home having been evacuated suffering from battle exhaustion. At the time I was extremely fit and yet Roy insisted that I went jogging with him for miles every day! I was glad to be sent forward to the Regiment as quickly as possible!”

(Quoted from Lt. Peter Hall in Rex Fellows, Fragments of Battle, 10)

Born on 30 April 1909 in Morecambe, Lancashire, Antony Roy Harrison was a solicitor, cricket player and prewar Territorial Army officer. He was commissioned with the Worcestershire Regiment in 1924 and transferred to the reserve list in 1934. After being recalled to active service in September 1939, he mobilized with 10th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment and became later second-in-command.

In January 1944, Harrison was appointed commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, which he led ashore at Normandy two weeks after D-Day. He described the scene on making landfall:

We set foot on the beaches at 5.20 p.m. in the evening and immediately moved off inland about a mile. Our first reception on the way was a Flying Fortress, which lost a wing and crashed a short distance off – most of the crew bailing out. Our fighters were very busy round the Caen area, and the flak was heavy. As darkness fell, enemy aircraft came out just off the beaches, and the tracers that went up from the ships and elsewhere was a real firework display.

(Quoted from Louis Scully, “1st Battalion Worcestershire Regiment – Normandy 1944”) http://www.worcestershireregiment.com/bat_1_normandy1944.php

One private recalled of Harrison, “The CO wouldn’t rest at all. Always on the go.” After nearly two months of continuous fighting, his health began to break down and he was hospitalized for battle exhaustion on 6 August 1944. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Osborne-Smith of the 4th Wiltshire Regiment arrived the next day to take over the 1st Worcestershire.

Harrison ended the war in command of the 8th Battalion stationed in the United Kingdom. He returned to his legal career but remained active in the regimental association and in the revival of the Home Guard in the 1950s.

He died in Colwell, Herefordshire on 26 August 1991.