80 years ago yesterday. Decorated local hero is lost during Dunkirk evacuation.
Serjeant Benjamin Joseph Traynor. Service Number 4442005. He died between 29th and 30th of May 1940. Aged 36. Served with 6th Bn. Green Howards (Yorkshire Regiment) O. B. E. Son of Thomas and Esther Traynor; husband of Caroline Traynor, of Stockton-on-Tees, Co. Durham. Inscription "Just a Memory Fond and True To Show, Dear Husband, I Think Of You" Buried in Plot 2, Row A, Grave 9 at Malo-Les-Bains Communal Cemetery some 3 kilometres east of Dunkirk. The headstone was erected in 1949. In 1911 the family lived at 77, Gladstone Street in the Cannon Street Area of Middlesbrough. He had served from 1922- 1934 with the Durham Light Infantry.
In 1939 he and an airman L.A.C. Goring had been hailed as heroes and honoured by the King in the New Year Honours. On 18th October Sgt. Traynor and a colleague had pulled two men to safety from the burning wreck of a Whitley K8996 of 102 Squadron that had crashed into the ground from a height of 70 feet at Catterick Airfield in North Yorkshire. A record of the Court of Enquiry proceedings is held at the National Archives at Kew, it reached the conclusion that the aeroplane had crashed because it was overweight.
From the London Gazette - "CENTRAL CHANCERY OF THE ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. St. James's Palace, S.W.I, 16th January, 1940. The KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the following Awards: - The Medal of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for Meritorious Service: - 4442005 Sergeant Benjamin Joseph Traynor, The Green Howards (Alexandra, Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire Regiment) (Territorial Army)." - "In October 1939, a Whitley aircraft, while taking off from an R.A.F. station (Catterick) with a crew of nine, stores and 30,000 rounds of ammunition, crashed, exploded and burst into flames. Sgt Traynor (4442005) and LAC Gorring (370776) ran to the scene, and, despite the fire and continually exploding ammunition, extricated an airman who had been badly injured. During this operation the oxygen tank blew up, but the men were not deterred from their gallant action, which resulted in the saving of the airman's life. One other airman crawled from the rear turret of the aircraft. The remaining members of the crew were killed."
"The Green Howards 4th and 5th Battalions had been in France since 26th January 1940 and were joined by 6th and 7th Battalions on 24th April. The 4th and 5th initially went to Lille and then Wavrin to assist in the construction of a 2nd Reserve Line, intended to be a north-western extension of the Maginot Line. The 6th were sent to Irles and the 7th to Farbus. For these Battalions their move forward began on 16th May, closely followed by a confused and erratic retreat from one defensive line after another. More than once orders were issued to dig in and hold a position at all costs, and only a matter of hours later orders were issued for a further retreat. As Synge relates in his history of the regiment during World War Two… “…often without rations, at times separated from their Brigades and, indeed with companies and platoons fighting for long periods on their own, it is impossible to tell a coherent story of those chaotic days..” “Wearily the 4th Battalion moved eastwards along the sands and quickly settled down in company areas, digging holes for shelter from any ‘overs’ as the Germans shelled Dunkirk. The day passed quietly with one excitement: a Hurricane flew low over the troops and dropped a be-ribboned message. There was a rush for the ‘stop-press’ news, which was eventually brought to Battalion HQ. It was a message scribbled in pencil by the pilot: ‘Good Luck! We can do no more.’”
Captain Whittaker of 5th Battalion summed up the sense of confusion after so short a campaign and the short distance, physical, emotional and psychological of a place of safety… “Those who got away sailed into the night, the sky behind them bright with the fires of the shambles that was Dunkirk, the horizon shortly to be lit by the sun shining over the cliffs of Dover on the morning of June 3rd – eighteen days after we had first gone up in to Belgium.” - Green Howards Museum website. The Germans had taken Boulogne on 25th May and Calais the following day and the Belgians surrendered to the Germans on 28th May and so it was even more difficult for all concerned, the situation left Dunkirk as the only viable port from which the British Expeditionary Force, part of the French army and the remains of the Belgian army could escape. The allied troops including groups from the Loyals, Leicesters, Sherwood Foresters, Warwickshires, East Lancashires, Borders, Coldstream Guards, Duke of Wellington's, Green Howards, Durham Light Infantry, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Royal Ulster Rifles, Grenadier Guards, Berkshires, Suffolks, Bedfordshire and Herts, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, East Surreys, Royal Fusiliers, South Lancashires and the Black Watch Regiments were under fire from both German artillery and several infantry divisions. Sgt. Traynor went missing during the evacuation from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo.
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