Lieutenant-Colonel J.E.F. Willoughby
2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment
2nd Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment

His huge experience, incisive mind and wicked sense of humour (he once swam the length of a swimming pool in a dinner jacket and more recently fired a potato from a model ballista at a less than well-liked retired officer) brought cheer in later life to his younger friends and doubtless to his men in earlier days. He never allowed his status to come between himself and the common man and all who knew him were enriched by his humanity.

(Wiltshire archaeological and natural history magazine, 1991, 185)

Born on 18 June 1913 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, John Edward Francis Willoughby, was commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment after graduating from Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1933. He served with the 2nd Battalion during the Battle of France in 1940 and became its commanding officer in 1943. In October of that year, he joined a War Office military mission on a tour of Australia and Burma.

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