Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Morrison-Jones
1/5th Battalion, Welch Regiment

Throughout the day he was continually with the fwd troops, and by his own complete disregard to danger in very close country, set a very fine example to his Battalion. It was entirely due to this Officer’s drive and imitative that the enemy was driven back across the stream.

(Military Cross citation, 1 March 1945)

Born on 15 October 1912 in Hendon, Middlesex, Jack Spencer Morrison-Jones was a cricket player who in October 1939 took an emergency commission with the Welch Regiment in October 1939. By the time the 53rd Welsh Division landed in Normandy in late June 1944, he had risen to second-in-command of the 1/5th Battalion, Welch Regiment. After Lieutenant-Colonel E.R.G. Ripley was accidently killed by a sentry, Morrison-Jones took the unit into battle on 1 July.

By the middle of the month, he reverted to 2iC on the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel J.T. Gibson. When he died of wounds on 20 September, Morrison-Jones once again assumed temporary command of the 1/5th Battalion, for which he earned the Military Cross. When his successor, Lieutenant-Colonel H.D. Nelson Smith, formerly CO of 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, was wounded in January 1945, Morrison-Jones took command for the third time.

One month after his M.C. was announced, he was killed in Baden-Württemberg, Germany on 2 April 1945. While on a reconnaissance, his jeep had exploded from a mine and suffered fatal injuries. He was succeeded by Major C.H. Bowker.