Robert Osborne-Smith

Lt-Col. A.W.N.L. Vickers

/ Matthew K Barrett / Leave a comment

Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Vickers
1st Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment

If you’re going to go and indulge in a war, you’ve got to be trained for it. And it is no use being heroic and going off fighting the 16th Panzer Grenadier Division with bows and arrows. You’ve got to have the equipment to do it. Provide you’ve got adequate equipment and provided you’re properly trained, and you’ve got a good command structure, and through your training your morale is high because you believe in your own fitness and prowess and you have pride in your unit, then I reckon you are ready for war.

(IWM interview, 6 Mar 1986)

Born on 19 January 1914 in London, Arthur William Neville Langston Vickers was a Regular Army officer, cricket player, rugby player and boxer. He attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and was commissioned with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1934. He spent several years in India and Burma during the late 1930s, until being recalled on the eve of the Second World War. He served as a company commander in the 1st Battalion, KOYLI in France until April 1940, when his brigade was assigned to operations in Norway.

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Lt-Col. R.E. Osborne-Smith

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Lieutenant-Colonel R.E. Osborne-Smith
1st Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment

I was brought before the Colonel (R.E. Osborne-Smith) and accused of ill treating an officer POW. I was questioned and explained exactly what had happened. The Colonel listened carefully and then said, ‘I reprimand you for ill-treatment in the field, to a prisoner of war’. He then got up, shook me by the hand and said ‘Roy, why didn’t you shoot the bastard?’

(Quoted from Lt. Roy Humphreys in Rex Fellows, Fragments of Battle, 92)

Born on 18 July 1908 in Saint Helier, Jersey, Robert Edward Osborne-Smith was a cricket player and commissioned officer in the Northamptonshire Regiment since 1929. During the 1930s, he played cricket for the Indian Army, the Egypt national team and the British Army. He became adjutant in 1937 but by 1944 he had been posted 4th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment as second-in-command.

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