World War II Victoria Cross Recipient. Born to Manx parents in Shanghai, China, his family returned to their homeland on the Isle of Man (located in the Irish Sea between Ireland and Great Britain) when he was young. He received his education there at King William's College, near Castletown. In 1928 he joined the Honourable Artillery Company, a unit of the Territorial Army, a volunteer reserve force of the British Army whose members continued in civilian work. He was employed by Royal Dutch Shell Oil and worked in Thailand and Malaya. In February 1931 he was placed on the supplementary reserve list. In April 1940, shortly after the start of the Second World War, he received an emergency commission into the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers as a 2nd Lieutenant. In 1942, he was seconded to 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment before being temporarily promoted to the rank of Major in April 1943, a position he would keep until being honorably granted the rank in 1945. In July 1943 his unit was part of 1st Airlanding Brigade which landed in Sicily as part of Operation Husky in July 1943. The same month, he took command of the battalion's B Company. In September 1944, he commanded a rifle company of the South Staffordshire Regiment when his unit was engaged with German forces at the Battle of Arnhem, in Holland, as part of the unsuccessful Allied military endeavor named Operation Market Garden. In an effort to reach and secure the Arnhem bridge that crossed the Rhine River (called Nederrijn in Holland), he and his men met heavy resistance from the enemy, including armored tanks, and were cut off from the rest of their battalion and forced to retreat. He was part of a small group of men who successfully escaped Arnham and he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his display of gallantry and valor during the battle. After the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, his unit was sent to Oslo, Norway to participate in Operation Doomsday, to ensure the surrender of the occupying German forces there. In August 1945 he returned to England and officially relinquished his wartime commission on 28 December 1945. In addition to the Victoria Cross, his military decorations include the 1939-1945 Star, the France and Germany Star, the Italy Star, the Defence Medal, the War Medal 1939-1945, the Efficiency Decoration, and the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. Upon leaving the British Army, he went back to his pre-war occupation with Royal Dutch Shell, living in East Asia and then West Africa. In 1951 he was elected to the Nigerian House of Representatives while working there. He returned to England in 1965 and settled in the Isle of Man upon his retirement. He died of cancer in Crowborough, Sussex, England at the age of 65. King William's College has a memorial scholarship in his name and the chapel in the Saint Bridget's Hospice at Douglas on the Isle of Man is dedicated to his memory.