Description
Object description
11 ms letters (25pp) written home to his parents during service as a 2nd Lieutenant and platoon commander with the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards (3rd Guards Brigade, Guards Division) in France, July - November 1918, covering his experiences of trench fighting and the battles around Haussy and Solesmes, in particular his participation in the fighting for St Python (October) for which he was recommended for the Military Cross, and including good details of trench warfare and living conditions, and the effects of losing men. Together with 2 ms letters to him (6pp), December 1914 and April 1915, from Brigadier F J Heyworth of the 20th Infantry Brigade including comments on the Western Front battles of 1915; ts transcriptions of all the letters (13pp), with explanatory notes by his son-in-law, Lieutenant General Sir Napier Crookenden; ts transcription (6pp) of letters written home from the Canadian Arctic in 1920; and a ts biography (21pp) written by Sir Napier and Lady Crookenden and Hugh Kindersley (3rd Baron Kindersley), with details of his family and childhood, his First World War experiences including the death of his brother Lionel ('Bo'), his command of the 6th Airlanding Brigade from May 1943, to which Crookenden was posted as Brigade Major, their joint experience of the glider landings on D-Day (6 June 1944) and the subsequent fighting in Normandy until Kindersley's being wounded and evacuated (12 - 13 June 1944), and his later career including in the Bank of England, and as a director of Rolls Royce, as well as his other work and interests up to his death in 1976.
Content description
11 ms letters (25pp) written home to his parents during service as a 2nd Lieutenant and platoon commander with the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards (3rd Guards Brigade, Guards Division) in France, July - November 1918, covering his experiences of trench fighting and the battles around Haussy and Solesmes, in particular his participation in the fighting for St Python (October) for which he was recommended for the Military Cross, and including good details of trench warfare and living conditions, and the effects of losing men. Together with 2 ms letters to him (6pp), December 1914 and April 1915, from Brigadier F J Heyworth of the 20th Infantry Brigade including comments on the Western Front battles of 1915; ts transcriptions of all the letters (13pp), with explanatory notes by his son-in-law, Lieutenant General Sir Napier Crookenden; ts transcription (6pp) of letters written home from the Canadian Arctic in 1920; and a ts biography (21pp) written by Sir Napier and Lady Crookenden and Hugh Kindersley (3rd Baron Kindersley), with details of his family and childhood, his First World War experiences including the death of his brother Lionel ('Bo'), his command of the 6th Airlanding Brigade from May 1943, to which Crookenden was posted as Brigade Major, their joint experience of the glider landings on D-Day (6 June 1944) and the subsequent fighting in Normandy until Kindersley's being wounded and evacuated (12 - 13 June 1944), and his later career including in the Bank of England, and as a director of Rolls Royce, as well as his other work and interests up to his death in 1976.
History note
Cataloguer PJB
History note
Catalogue date 2002-04