Lieutenant-Colonel E.R.G. Ripley
1/5th Battalion, Welch Regiment

Colonel Ripley, a giant of a man resembling a Viking went on a recce, with me, in a jeep towards the hamlet of Le Valtru. After passing Cheux, he became restless. It was getting dark and approaching the crossroads, he leaped off the jeep and strode down the road towards the buildings. He was challenged by a sentry, failed to respond (he had a hearing defect) and was shot. A dreadful blow at a time when we hadn’t been bloodied.

(Capt. Bill Tudor quoted from Patrick Delaforce, Red Crown and Dragon, 38)

Born on 5 November 1911 in Yorkshire, Edward Robert Guy Ripley was heir to the baronet Ripley, of Acacia, Rawdon, West Riding of Yorkshire and Bedstone House, Shropshire. He was educated at Stowe School, Buckingham and commissioned with the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. His great-grandfather, Sir Henry William Ripley, 1st Baronet (1813–1882) was a member of parliament and his father Henry William Alfred Ripley, 3rd Baronet (1879–1956) was a Boer War veteran and colonel in the First World War.

By March 1944, E.R.G. Ripley had risen to lieutenant-colonel in command of the 1/5th Welch Regiment. The 53rd Division deployed to Normandy on 28 June, but Ripley was tragic killed two days later and one day before the regiment went into action. Major J.S. Morrison-Jones took over until the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel J.T. Gibson in mid-July 1944.

When his father in 1956, the Ripley baronet passed to his third brother, Hugh George Harley Ripley (1916–2003), a former captain in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry who earned the U.S. Silver Star in Italy. The second brother, Light Lieutenant Henry Derek Ripley (1914—1940) was killed in action in Greece.