Major Dick Normand RIP

Kyt · Jun 23, 2009

Major Dick Normand - Telegraph

Major Dick Normand, who died on April 29 aged 97, was awarded an MC during the last month of the Second World War, and achieved celebrity in old age by continuing to play competitive golf into his nineties.

His first offensive action came in early January 1945 when, as a member of the 5th/9th Royal Scots, he was ordered to mount a night attack near Heinsberg, in Germany. Fifty yards from buildings manned by enemy soldiers he found himself in a minefield, where 19 of his men were injured and two officers killed.

His company later emerged unscathed from a bloody attack on the town of Hemsberg. But as the Germans were pushed back, it came under constant fire from snipers, machine-gunners and "moaning Minnie" mortars. When Normand established a company headquarters his wireless operator, batman and the gunner officer co-ordinating artillery fire were wounded. A second-in-command who joined him was soon shot through the head beside him.

On the night of April 17/18 1945, Normand was given the task of leading his men around the left flank of the town of Soltan, in Lower Saxony. There was no time for reconnaissance. The company advanced through the streets under sniper and anti-tank fire. But, according to the citation for his MC: "With complete disregard for his own safety Major Normand moved from platoon to platoon organising his advance. Whenever enemy resistance was met he was always on the spot directing operations." The citation directly credited him with the capture of "a total of 10 officers and 228 enemy other ranks".

In the midst of the excitement Normand stopped to loot a shop, picking out some underwear for his wife, which he stuffed down the front of his battledress before continuing the battle.

Richard John Normand was born on January 28 1912 in Johannesburg, the son of a Scots emigrant who took part in the Jameson Raid and became governor of the Transvaal prison service. After going to a local prep school Dick was sent to Fettes and then Edinburgh University, where he read Law.

He became a Writer to the Signet with the firm Shepherd and Wedderburn, enjoyed tennis, squash, shooting and fishing, and was commissioned as a territorial in the Royal Scots in 1935.

After arriving in France as part of his battalion's advance party in June 1940, he was reprimanded for wearing a kilt and Tam O'Shanter instead of battledress and a tin hat. When the battalion arrived as part of a vain hope of creating a last line of defence behind the Seine, he accompanied it in a 50-mile advance towards Paris and then in its rapid retreat back to Cherbourg.

After meeting his future wife, Audrey Green, a Waaf, while guarding a Norfolk airfield, Normand was posted to West Africa, where he was given responsibility for censorship before returning home to his regiment in Britain. By the time he embarked for France after D-Day he had been trained for mountain warfare, seaborne landings and air-portable landings.

At the end of the war he returned to the Law, working as a family solicitor with Cowan and Dalmahoy and then Lindsays.

In his later years Dick Normand devotedly nursed his wife, with whom he had three daughters, until her death in 2000, and remained a fiercely competitive golfer.

He went round the Royal and Ancient course at St Andrews in 86 while carrying his own clubs, aged 90, and continued to play to a handicap of 21 at Muirfield, where he registered the largest recorded number of club matches and a hole-in-one at all four of the course's par-three holes.

He marched in the Royal Scots' last parade before becoming part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland in 2006, and won a bridge competition in January.
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Antipodean Andy · Jun 23, 2009

A long war indeed. RIP.

Was just reading about 455 Squadron members being made honorary members of St Andrews on the understanding that, since St Andrews was in RAF Leuchars' low-flying area, the aircrew would not disturb the members on course.

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