Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

81 Education and War-Time Both brothers had developed a love of skiing and went together, with friends including Kenneth Mackay, later the third Earl of Inchcape, to the Austrian slopes every year. 41 They had set off as usual in the winter of 1938, but their father became alarmed by the latest news from Nazi Germany and he had them paged at Victoria Station with instructions to return home immediately. Naturally, the young men dismissed the request as nothing more than parental panic and left as usual. Despite Kenneth Mackay losing his passport, all returned safely. Within two years both brothers were involved in the war in Europe and it would be many more years before the Allied victory allowed them to return to enjoy the ski slopes. When war with Germany was declared in September 1939, both brothers immediately enlisted in the Scots Guards, their father’s old regiment, and reported to Tidworth Barracks in Wiltshire. The First Battalion served in the defence of Calais during the fall of France in 1940 while George and John Pelham were training at the Sandhurst officer training unit for four months before receiving their commissions. While their battalion was being reformed, George and John Pelham managed to play in a couple of matches at Lord’s in August and September. They were together in the First Battalion Scots Guards XI against the 903 Squadron Balloon Barrage XI, and on opposite sides in the match between a Lord’s XI, featuring George, and a Middlesex XI with John Pelham, under the captaincy of Walter Robins. Eventually George sailed with the First Battalion to North Africa as part of the Sixth Armoured Division and then as part of the invasion of Sicily and Italy until the end of the war. George received the Italy Star for operational service in Sicily and Italy during the period 11 June 1943 to 8 May 1945, including the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. He was awarded the DSO for meritorious and distinguished service during active operations against the enemy at Monte Casino, Anzio, Salerno and San Marino. 42 From March to December 1944, George commanded the right flank company of the First Battalion of the Scots Guards throughout the fighting on the Sangro River during the Allied advance from Rome to Florence, at the crossing of the River Arno and the subsequent advance to Bologna. On 23 June, when his company faced German machine-gun fire and mortar fire at Santeano, he ‘mounted the outside of a tank and, at extreme danger to himself, directed the fire of the tank up to within 50 yards of the guns, silencing them all, thus enabling his company to gain its objective, and the advance to continue’. For this, and his personal part in four other actions, he was awarded the Military Cross, and the citation also noted that ‘he has not only shown exemplary personal courage and practical skill in controlling his company in action, but has kept them in the highest spirits both in and out of the line, by his own unfailing cheerfulness under the very worst conditions.’ 41 He used the courtesy title Viscount Glenapp before succeeding to the earldom in 1939; he was later a director of the shipping line P and O and British Petroleum. 42 Gazetted on 28 June 1945.