Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Hastings
6th Battalion, Green Howards
2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps

I want it to be clearly understood that I, who was there and saw it, have nothing but admiration for the way the Bn fought yesterday afternoon. The withdrawal was given entirely on my order, it was carried out perfectly, and it was given chiefly because of the threat of tanks to our Lines of Communication. The men of the Bn deserve more credit for their performance yesterday than for many other battles for which we will have received more credit.

(Quoted in 6th Green Howards war diary, 12 Jun 1944)

Born on 16 January 1917 in Rugby, Warwickshire, Robin Hood William Stewart Hastings was an horse racer, a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford University and a commissioned officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps since 1938. In response to press criticism about “undergraduate hooliganism,” in 1937 he wrote a joint letter with George Haig, 2nd Earl Haig, to the Daily Telegraph, “Whereas our father sowed their wild oats in the comparatively secluded company of dons and tutors, our audience is only limited by the circulation of the daily papers … The public gaze is misdirected. The foundations of the Empire are hardly likely to be shaken by the hail of stones.” Hastings’ and Haig’s letter went on to claim the Empire was “however, threatened by the words and actions of those undergraduates whose principal diversion is to pass treasonable motions,” presumably a reference to radical, Communist, or pacifist elements at the university.

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