Corran purdon biography channel
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Purdon CBE MC CPM, Major General C W B
| General Officer Commanding Near East Land Forces |
Corran William Brooke Purdon was born in Queenstown, (now Cobh) County Cork on 4 May He was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, and the Royal Military College Sandhurst that had in effect, with the approach of war, become an Officer Cadet Training Unit, with the six-month course concentrating on training Cadet Purdon to be an infantry platoon commander.
Officer Cadet Purdon was commissioned into The Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR) on 31 December and posted to the depot in Armagh. He was deemed too young for active service with 2 RUR in the British Expeditionary Force in France, and was moved to Ballymena where the first buildings, that would later be part of the new RUR depot, had been completed. Frustrated at not seeing action in France, he volunteered for service with the Commando forces being raised at that time. When he discovered that his CO had been tearing up his applications, he
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British WW2 hero famed for ‘Greatest Raid of All’ dies age 97 - ‘A true gentleman'
Major General Corran Purdon details the Raid of St Nazaire
After the collision about commandos poured off the crashed ship, the obsolete First World War destroyer HMS Campbeltown, and stormed numerous dockside buildings.
Under murderous enemy fire femte månaden i året Gen Purdon led his grupp of commandos to successfully blow up one of the two winding houses that operated the gates.
They had planned to escape on motor gun boats that had escorted Campbeltown, but they had been destroyed by the German guns.
The commandos fought their way through the Nazi-occupied town of St Nazaire, taking many casualties, before they were captured.
Twelve hours later, the delayed explosives on Campbletown went off and the damage put the dock out of use for the rest of the war.
Despite over half of the commandos and Royal Navy crew who took part in the near-suicidal operation either being killed or captured, the mission was h
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Corran Purdon was born in Queenstown, County Cork but would spend part of his early childhood in India where his father, Major General W Brook Purdon DSO MBE MC, was serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He would be sent to school in London and nordlig Ireland before attending Campbell College in Belfast and commented later that “my Irish education made such a difference to me when I joined my Regiment – and my ability to play the bagpipes was another asset.”
After passing the Army Examination, Corran Purdon entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in July , and, following the outbreak of the Second World War, was commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR). His father had once said that “there’s only one regiment for the boy, the Royal Ulster Rifles” and so it came about that early in , the young subaltern travelled to the RUR’s Regimental Depot, which was then located at Armagh. During the early period of the war, he would encounter a large number of men of all