Name
Wilfred George Deacon
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
17/07/1943
25
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Captain
195189
Durham Light Infantry
9th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
CATANIA WAR CEMETERY, SICILY
III. C. 9.
Italy
Headstone Inscription
ABSENT FROM THE BODY PRESENT WITH THE LORD: SADLY MISSED. NANCY AND PHILIP
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial
Biography
Born in Hitchin, with his home in southwest London, he was a regular soldier from the early 1930s. He had intended to buy himself out in order to join the police force, but the war intervened. He was in the Beds & Herts Regiment on the 1st September 1939 with the Service No. 195189 and was sent to France and wounded during the withdrawal to Dunkirk. He was brought back to England and recuperated in a hospital in Staines.
Later he was attached to the 9th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry and went to North Africa serving at Tobruk and through that campaign to Tunisia. He landed in Sicily on the night of the 9th/10th July 1943 as part of Operation Husky, but within a week he had been killed in action.
The 9th Durham Light Infantry were part of the 151st Infantry Brigade in the 50th Infantry Division of XIIl Corps in the 8th Army. The 50th Division landed in Sicily about five miles south of Syracuse near Avolo. They fought their way north through Lentini and the important Prima Sole bridgehead by the 16th July. German opposition was much heavier than expected. Further attacks on the l 7th July made little further progress.
His grave is in Catania War Cemetery in Sicily in Plot 3, Row C, Grave 9.
He and his wife Anne nee Buxton had married circa 1940 and had a son Philip whom his father never saw. His parents were Frederick and Alice Deacon.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Mrs A.E. Dunham - his sister, ‘Images of War’ by Marshall Cavendish, ‘The Battle for Italy’ by W.G.F. Jackson, ‘Orders of Battle 1939-45’ by H.F. Joslen
