Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
John Durnford-Slater
Summary
Brigadier John Frederick Durnford-Slater, DSO and bar (1909 – 5 February 1972) was a British Army officer who was credited with establishing the first Army commando unit during the Second World War.
An officer in the Royal Artillery who eventually rose to the rank of brigadier, he was responsible for developing many of aspects of the commando concept. Commanding No. 3 Commando he participated in raids on Guernsey, the Lofoten Islands, Vaagso, Dieppe and Sicily. In Italy he commanded the 2nd Commando Brigade that undertook the capture of Termoli, before serving as deputy commander of the Special Service Group, a divisional level headquarters unit that planned and administered all commando operations during Operation Overlord and the advance into Germany.
Durnford-Slater was born in 1909 to Leonard Slater and his wife Constance (née Pridham) and grew up in Instow, in the north of Devon. His family had a strong military tradition, his own father had been a regular officer who had been killed on 14 September 1914 while serving with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment in France during the First World War. Following the death of his father, the family name changed to Durnford-Slater after an inheritance from the Durnford family.
From the outset his mother encouraged him to pursue a career in the army. At the age of 13 Durnford-Slater was sent to Wellington, a school with a long army tradition. Nevertheless, as a teenager Durnford-Slater professed that he had no desire to pursue a military career, indeed, he hated the training that he was required to undertake as part of the Officer Training Corps having difficulty learning drill and constantly drawing the ire of instructors for the poor state of his uniform.
As he grew up he professed a desire to move to Argentina and breed horses, having heard anecdotes of life in South America from people who lived in his village. His mother, however, continued to push him towards a career in the army, hoping that he would follow in his father's footsteps and join the Royal Sussex Regiment.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.