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John Cory Stephenson (1917-1943)

Soldier
Service No:145228
Rank:Captain
Squadron:HQ
Role:Signals Officer
Known as:Jack
Service:Joined 23H on 17 Feb 1941 from the 15th/19th Hussars. Appointed Captain, 14 Jun 1942. Posted to M.E.F. on 7 Aug 1943
KIA:1 Dec 1943 (Plane crash)
Burial:Phaleron War Cemetery. Collective grave 5.D. 1-12. [Grave]
Mentioned in:
War Diary
17 Feb 1941, 14 Jun 1942, 7 Aug 1943
23H Story
Page 12, Page 22
Casualty List
Record 1, Record 2
Press
Northern Daily Mail, 5 Dec 1942
Civilian
Residence:Birmingham
Birth:22 Aug 1917 in Hartlepool, Durham
Parents
John Digby StephensonMinnie Irvine Cory
Marine Surveyor.
Meadowcroft, Greatham, Durham.
Birth Jan 1880 in West Hartlepool, Durham.
Death 19 Nov 1936 in Hartlepool.
Birth Oct 1875 in West Hartlepool, Durham.
Death 21 Aug 1933 in Hartlepool.
Marriage registered Jun 1910 in Hartlepool, Durham.

Notes

Special mission to Yugoslavia

Radio operators and officers, from both 23rd Hussars and 24th Lancers, were asked to volunteer for a special duty. I was among the four radio operators who volunteered from the Lancers.

Together with others from the Hussars we were taken to a parachute battalion barracks in Oxford. Here we were given full details of the operation to parachute into Yugoslavia to assist the resistance partisans - but then they realised they had forgotten to test us radio operators for our proficiency in morse!.

We were taken to a tent and seated at a long table with morse keys in front of each person. A sergeant then told us he would give us a 'warm up' and sent a message at a reasonable speed which we all managed to get.

Then an officer came in and the sergeant saluted and said "I've given them a warm-up and they were all OK".

The officer took his place at the morse key and sent a message at such a speed that I, for one, couldn't even get the first few letters, let alone any of the words. However, two of our Lancer friends did take the message perfectly correctly and one of them was such a 'natural' that he didn't write each word as it came but waited and wrote a sentence at a time!.

Therefore out of our group of half a dozen or so there were only two who were capable of doing the job!. After saying our goodbyes and good luck to them they went off to join other men who had been accepted from other regiments.

It now dawned on the officers of the unit that here was a group of men who had all been completely briefed on the complete operation but were not now taking part. There was only one solution we would all have to sign the official secrets act and then be confined to the camp until the operation had been mounted. For some seven or eight days we hung around the camp enjoying the excellent food and reveling in the comfort of having bed sheets at night. During that time we heard that one of our friends had been killed doing a practice jump and an officer from the 23rd hussars (Captain Stephenson) was killed on the flight over. Then we were given a forty-eight hour leave pass, and travel warrants to re-join our units in Bridlington.

When we arrived back at our unit we rejoined our squadrons and settled down to normal work. Then, some three weeks later at breakfast our intelligence officer came over to my table and, after getting the friends I was sitting with to move to another table, he said "I've got some news for you about the Lancers who were accepted for that special job you went for in Oxford. A report has come through from a liason officer with the Yugoslav partisans that, as they landed, our men were shot by communist resistance fighters to get their equipment".

Standing up to go he added "Don't forget, there are still some of our people out there so don't let on what we've been talking about will you?".

Leonard Bolden, WW2 People's War (BBC), 8 May 2005