Tony Hibbert (British Army officer)
Tony Hibbert, MBE MC (6 December 1917 - 12 October 2014),[1] was a British Army officer who fought in World War II. His military career began in 1935 and ended in 1947.[2] During the war, he served in the Battle of France; the North African Campaign; the Italian Campaign; Operation Market Garden; and as leader of a T-Force in Operation Eclipse, which was carried out by the Allies shortly before V-E Day.
As a civilian, after his time in the army, Major Hibbert enlarged and diversified his family’s wine and spirits business. A restless first retirement, begun in the early 1970s, was followed by a 1981 retirement attempt that led his wife and him to ownership of Cornwall's Trebah Garden, which they went on to restore to its prewar splendor.[2] In 2009, after nearly sixty years of marriage, Major Hibbert was widowed.[2] Five years later, he died peacefully, at home.
Beginning of military career
James Anthony Hibbert was born in Chertsey, Surrey.[3] Son of a distinguished pilot of the Royal Flying Corps,[4][5] he decided to enter the British Army while he was in Germany, where, as a vineyard worker, he was apprenticing for his family's wine business.[1][2][5] Having seen that Germany was preparing for war, he returned to England, in 1935, and applied to the Royal Military Academy;[1][2] his decision to abandon his apprenticeship upset his father.[2]
In January 1938, Hibbert was commissioned into the Royal Artillery.[1] On 9 September 1939,[2] less than ten days after the German invasion of Poland, he arrived in Cherbourg, France, with the British Expeditionary Force.[2] In the Battle of Dunkirk, he commanded a half-battery that defended the Allies' northern perimeter for four days, before his ammunition ran out; on 1 June 1940, he had to blow up his own guns.[1][5][6] He was evacuated on "Sun X," an old tugboat, and was mentioned in dispatches for his actions.[1]
1st Parachute Brigade
In October 1940,[6] Hibbert joined the original No. 2 Commando, the initial unit of the paratrooper corps Winston Churchill had called for after the debacle in France.[7][8] Having been redesignated No. 11 Special Air Service Battalion in November 1940,[9] the unit became the 1st Parachute Battalion the following September.[9] As part of the newly-formed 1st Parachute Brigade,[9] it was soon part of the emergent 1st Airborne Division.
Hibbert served in the North African Campaign, during which he became a staff officer,[5] and in the Italian Campaign.[1] In July 1944, after he'd attended the Staff College at Camberley, he became Brigade Major of the 1st Parachute Brigade.[1]
On 17 September 1944, the first day of the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, Brigade HQ, led by Major Hibbert, and the 2nd Parachute Battalion, led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost, became the only units of the 1st Parachute Brigade—or of the 1st Airborne Division—to reach the Arnhem road bridge, the Division's objective in the operation.[1][5][10] Though the operation's plan had required the bridge to be held for only two days, the two units held its northern end, against fierce opposition, for three.[1][5] While leading a remnant group in withdrawal from the bridge, toward nearby Oosterbeek, where the rest of the Division was still fighting,[10] Hibbert was captured by the Germans.[1][2][5]
After escaping from a truck in which he and other prisoners were being transported to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, Hibbert was sheltered by the Dutch Resistance.[3][5][10] Most British and Polish troops who hadn't been killed, captured, or wounded in the attempt to take Arnhem were successfully withdrawn from the area, in Operation Berlin. Hibbert and other officers of the 1st Brigade regrouped and planned Operation Pegasus, by which well over one hundred sheltered men, including them, got out of the area a month thereafter.[1][10] Shortly after the men crossed the Rhine, under cover of darkness, and were met by the Allied force that had been sent to retrieve them, Hibbert's leg was broken, when a jeep on whose bonnet he was riding was in a collision.[1][5][10] The five months' hospitalization this cost him was, in his words, a "thoroughly unsatisfying climax" to a "thoroughly unsatisfactory battle."[10]
Operation Eclipse
Having been all but destroyed in Operation Market Garden, the 1st Airborne Division saw no action in the war's remainder, but Major Hibbert’s own participation in the conflict continued. In April 1945, still on crutches, Hibbert was discharged from hospital.[2] On the morning of 5 May, in part of Operation Eclipse, he led a T-Force from Lubeck to the German port city of Kiel.[6][11] The force consisted of some hundreds of men from the 5th King's Regiment of the British Army and the 30th Assault Unit of the Royal Navy.[12]
At Lüneburg Heath, the evening before, the German forces in northwest Germany had surrendered; but in Kiel, officers of the Germany Navy were convinced they hadn’t surrendered.[11] German troops north of the Kiel Canal were reluctant to hand in their arms.[11] Even so, Hibbert and his small force established their authority in a city with tens of thousands of German fighters.[11][12] No other Allied force arrived until 7 May, when troops of the 15th Division moved into the city.[11]
Operation Eclipse had been prompted by Swedish intelligence reports that the Red Army would violate the territorial terms of the Yalta agreement and advance from Germany to Denmark.[12] Capture of Denmark would have given the Soviet Union a postwar port free of the ice that blocked its own port of Murmansk several months each year.[12] By establishing Allied control of Kiel and of the German scientific bases between that city and the Danish border, Hibbert's force forestalled such a Russian move.[12]
On V-E Day, 8 May, Major Hibbert was placed under arrest.[6] His advance to Kiel had required him to go north of Bad Segeberg, in apparent violation of the surrender terms that had been agreed at Lüneburg Heath. [11] The advance had been made on orders from the 21st Army Group,[11] whose Chemical Warfare branch controlled T-Force operations,[13] but there was a question whether the 21st Army Group had had the authority to issue such an order.[11]
Hibbert was absolved of blame and released, but the arrest meant that his "rather frustrating military career," as he himself later put it, had ended with "a certain artistic symmetry."[1][5][6] On 3 September 1939, the day the British declared war, he’d been arrested for crashing his Battery Commander’s command car—and had been exonerated.[6][1] He’d spent the first day and the last day of the war under arrest.[2]
Life after the military
In 1947, Major Hibbert was discharged from the Army; he became a businessman.
In 1960, on land he owned at Lymington, Major Hibbert formed Salterns Sailing Club, which is run for and by youngsters ("with some adult help").[14][15]
In the 1980s, Major Hibbert moved to Cornwall and purchased Trebah Garden. One of the United Kingdom's most important Victorian gardens, Trebah is now a major tourist attraction in the area.
In 2010, Kiel bestowed its Great Seal on Major Hibbert, for his keeping the town from being captured by the Russians at the end of World War II.[16][17]
On 12 October 2014, at age 96, Major Hibbert died, at his family home.[18]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Roll Call: Major Tony Hibbert, MBE MC ParaData, Airborne Assault (Registered Charity)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Obituary—Major James Anthony Hibbert, MBE MC Trebah Garden website
- ^ a b Obituary of Major Tony Hibbert The Independent, 17 October 2014.
- ^ Major James Anthony Hibbert, The Pegasus Archive—The Battle of Arnhem Archive
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Major Tony Hibbert - obituary The Telegraph, 19 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f Trebah My Story, Page 18: Hibbert and Bradshaw Families—Major Hibberts Log As captured by Internet Archive Wayback Machine 20 Aug 2011
- ^ Formation of Airborne Forces, 1940-41 ParaData, Airborne Assault (Registered Charity)
- ^ Text of Churchill's call for a parachute corps ParaData, Airborne Assault (Registered Charity)
- ^ a b c Formation and Early Airborne Forces ParaData, Airborne Assault (Registered Charity)
- ^ a b c d e f Personal account of Major Tony Hibbert's experiences of the Battle of Arnhem ParaData, Airborne Assault (Registered Charity)
- ^ a b c d e f g h A diary of ‘T’ Force operations in KIEL ARCRE—Archive research & document copying
- ^ a b c d e "Operation Eclipse"—History Learning Site
- ^ History of ‘T’ Force Activities in 21 Army Group ARCRE—Archive research & document copying
- ^ Salterns Sailing Club—Welcome
- ^ Salterns Sailing Club—Who Runs the Club
- ^ "Honour for major who led capture of German port in WWII". BBC News Cornwall. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ "British war veteran receives ceremonial seal", (Google translation)
- ^ Decorated war veteran, Major Tony Hibbert of Trebah Gardens has died The West Briton, 14 October 2014
External links
- Major Hibberts Log—Homepage As captured by Internet Archive Wayback Machine 20 May 2013
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