Lieutenant-Colonel T. Hart Dyke
Hallamshire Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment

It was now getting most difficult to find men to accept the added responsibility and danger of leadership. There was little to offer in return for what one asked of them. Rank and money meant little these days. A dozen times they had escaped improbably. Long ago the few surviving men in the rifle companies had been bound to realize the odds against them remaining unharmed. But the honour and good name of the battalion meant much to them.

(Hart Dyke, Normandy to Arnhem: A Story of the Infantry)

Born on 19 February 1905 in Chaman, British India, Trevor Hart Dyke attended Marlborough College then the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He took a commission with Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1924 and served with the 2nd Battalion in India and the Sudan. He volunteered with the King’s African Rifles in the 1930s in Keyna and Uganda until he rejoined the Queen’s Regiment in 1936. Having completed staff college at Camberley, he held posts with the War Officer and staff assignments at brigade and division levels.

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