Lieutenant-Colonel G.P.L. Weston
2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (MG)

During my daily visits to Platoons I still see men unnecessarily miserable under quite moderate and sporadic shell fire. Very often I am greeted by the remark “It’s murder up here” but found shells dropping 200 years or more away. I want All Ranks to realise that, except for a few isolated instances, we have not yet experienced the really heavy shellfire which we have inflicted frequently upon the Hun and which we must expect when he mounts a large scale attack against us. A little shelling is good for the soul.

(Weston in War Diary, 11 Jul 1944)

Born on 21 August 1910, Gerald Patrick Linton Weston was a cricketer player, commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) in 1931 and promoted to captain in 1939. As a qualified pilot, he was seconded to the Royal Air Force and served as a flight lieutenant with a bomber squadron. By June 1943, he returned to the infantry and succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.E.F. Willoughby in command of the 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, the machine gun unit attached to 3rd Infantry Division.

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