Private Papers of Captain R A J Bingley

Photocopies of his interesting ms account (8pp) describing his active service as a Subaltern in command of 5th Platoon, 'S' Company, 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment (1st Parachute Brigade, 1st Airborne Division) during Operation FUSTIAN, the airborne landing in Sicily on 13 July 1943, including training in Tunisia, notably an excellent briefing that his Brigade were to seize and hold the Primosole Bridge over the Simeto River; the embarkation of his platoon onto two C47 Dakotas, one of which dropped his men on Malta by mistake; the heavy Italian flak; his argument with the American pilot, a Major in the USAAF, over the correct time and place for his platoon to jump; landing with his men on their objective; securing the bridge and clearing the Italian defenders from pill boxes although he was wounded in the hand by a bullet; repulsing enemy reinforcements and digging in against probing attacks by the 4th German Parachute Regiment (1st German Parachute Division); being ordered to lead a party of a dozen wounded who were being evacuated to Lentini and his own eventual evacuation to hospitals in Tunisia and then in the UK; and learning on his return to active service that the successes achieved by 1st Para in Sicily had in fact been claimed by 2nd Para and that in the confusion this mistake had never been disputed.

Cataloguer SNR

Catalogue date 2002-06-17