Patrick
Porteous,
the son of an Indian Army brigadier general, was
born in Abbottabad, India, on 1st January
1918. After being educated at Wellington School he entered the Royal
Military Academy at Woolwich.
Porteous
was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1937. He served with
the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in
France and was evacuated from Dunkirk
in May 1940. Later that year he joined the 4th Commando Regiment.
In April
1942 General Bernard Montgomery
and Admiral
Louis Mountbatten began
to plan the Dieppe Raid. It was originally
due to take place in July but bad weather resulted in it being postponed
until August.
On 19th
August 1942 a small mixed force of 5,000 Canadian and 1,000 British
troops landed at Dieppe. This included Porteous whose task was to
organize an attack on a six-gun German battery near Varengeville.
Although wounded through the hand and upper arm early in the raid,
he led his men across 250 yards of open ground and through barbed
wire defences. Despite heavy machine-gun fire, Porteous and his men
took the battery with a bayonet assault.
During
the Dieppe Raid 4,000 of the men were
either killed, wounded or captured. Porteous, despite being wounded
again, this time in the thigh, managed to get back to England
where he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
After making
a full recovery Porteous was promoted to second in command of the
4th Commando Regiment and took part in the D-Day
landings in June, 1944.
Porteous's
post-war career included service in Palestine, Germany and Singapore
and was commander of the Junior Leaders' Regiment (1960-63). He was
also commander of the Rheindahlen Garrison of the British Army of
the Rhine when he retired in 1970. Patrick
Porteous died
on 9th October 2000.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
