Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Hamilton
11th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry
7th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment

I can’t hide from myself the fact that on many occasions I was either uncertain of the outcome or plain scared. But as commanding officer you had to show yourself, and show yourself totally in command of yourself and the situation, for the troops instinctively get to feel whether the commanding officer is going to keep control or not. Quite a number of COs were removed, either because they lost their nerve through not being able to get enough sleep or clearly lost the confidence of the troops.

(Hamilton, Editor-in-Chief: The Fleet Street Memoirs, 39)

Born in South Shields, England on 6 December 1918, Charles Denis Hamilton was a former King’s Scout and newspaperman. Anticipating a future war and possible conscription, he joined the Territorial Army and took a commission with the Durham Light Infantry in 1937. He served during the evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940, and then began training for defence of the anticipated German invasion. “We soon had a powerful battalion,” he wrote of the 11th DLI, “… I grew a moustache in the faint hope that I too might look older. I was never to shave it off.”

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