Lieutenant-Colonel I.L. Reeves
4th Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry
7th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry

We found ourselves in the most ghastly factory area, one mass of small streets, passages, walls, walls within walls, piles of iron and waste of every description. We soon discovered some machine-gun posts and started to clear them. That started two days and a night’s street fighting, the most tiring and trying type of fighting even under the best conditions.

(Quoted in Patrick Delaforce, Marching to the Sound of Gunfire: North West Europe, 1944-5, 138)

Born on 22 September 1909 in Hanover Square, Glamorgan, Wales, Ivor Leith Reeves was commissioned into the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry in 1930. He earned the Military Cross as a company commander in the 1st Battalion during the Battle of France in May 1940. During the Normandy campaign, he took command of the 4th Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry in the 11th Armoured Division in July 1944.

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