Major Jack Bazzard - Telegraph Major Jack Bazzard, who has died aged 90, won an MC in Italy in a fiercely-fought battle in December 1944 which ended with his mistaken arrest. Bazzard was then a lieutenant, serving as Forward Observation Officer in command of "C" Troop, 97th (Kent Yeomanry) Field Regiment RA (KY). The regiment's orders were to provide artillery support on a well-defended enemy position, a low, sharp-crested ridge, near Pergola, south west of Faenza. On the night of December 14, Bazzard and his OP group accompanied "D" Company, 3rd Battalion 1st Punjab Regiment in their attack on the ridge. He joined the forward platoon. Weeks of torrential rain had turned the ground into a quagmire, and haystacks, fired by enemy tracer, silhouetted the Indian troops as they charged. They were heavily shelled and mortared. Machine gunners sheltering in farmhouses took a toll, and the company commander and the other Indian officers were wounded early on. "There are dead and wounded everywhere as we are caught on a minefield by the enemy shelling," Bazzard wrote in his diary. As the casualties mounted, he took command of the company and, with only 22 men left, assaulted and captured the objective. The company commander was brought into a farmhouse, having lost a leg, and one of the OP group stepped on a mine and lost a foot. Bazzard himself was wounded in the head by mortar fire – he had been saved by the wireless set that he was carrying, but was unable to contact his guns to direct their fire. The Germans then mounted a ferocious counter-attack. The farmhouse was continuously shelled by a tank firing over open sights, and grenades were hurled at the small force at close range. At the height of the crisis, Bazzard could not contact his battery commander or even make his men understand him. A Punjabi signaller, however, using his own wireless set, managed to get through. Bazzard gave his orders to the Indians in English and broken Italian and he and the survivors succeeded in beating off the attack. When another company of the 3/1st Punjab Regiment arrived to relieve them, they found Bazzard in corduroy trousers and a pullover, mistook him for a German and promptly made him their prisoner. He was awarded an immediate Military Cross. Afterwards, with justifiable pride, he said that the recommendation for the award had been signed by four generals. Jack Conrad Bazzard was born at Tenterden, Kent, on June 26 1918 and educated locally. As a boy he was a good all-round sportsman and excelled at boxing. His ambition to be a journalist was thwarted by the outbreak of the Second World War and he was commissioned into the Kent Yeomanry. His first posting was to St Catherine's Island near Tenby, Wales. He complained that little could be done to halt any invasion as the ammunition that had been provided did not fit his guns. He accompanied 385 Battery to France as part of the BEF, and after the evacuation from Dunkirk rejoined KY in England together with the remnants of this unit. He accompanied KY to Iraq and then to Egypt, took part in the battles of Alam El Halfa and El Alamein and, after the North Africa campaign, fought throughout the long slog up Italy. On one occasion, after sustaining an injury, he was put on a troop ship full of war wounded. At every port they were so feted by the locals that Bazzard could not bring himself to tell them that he had broken his leg in a game of football. After the war he served in BAOR with 625 Air Observation Post Squadron, 42nd Field Regiment RA and 10th Field Regiment RA. He was then adjutant of 297th (Kent Yeomanry) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, which KY had become, before a final posting to Chestnut Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. Throughout his service in Germany Bazzard played every team sport available with great commitment. While opening the batting for his regiment in Essen he was informed that his wife had given birth to their second child. After scoring a respectable number of runs before being bowled out, he drove in haste to the hospital, checked that mother and baby were in good health and returned to the match in time to open the bowling. He retired from the Army in 1958 and was appointed bursar of St Elphins, a girls' boarding school in Derbyshire, where he remained for a number of years. He then settled in Kent and was for many years president of the Tenterden Royal British Legion. Aged 83, Bazzard was staying with a cousin in Wiltshire when they heard the sound of an explosion. "It was gigantic," he said later, "and, as an artilleryman, I have heard some explosions in my time." He and his companion ran out of the house and saw that a caravan, 100 yards away, was ablaze. After scaling a four-foot wall topped with barbed wire and running to the vehicle, they found an injured man. A gas cylinder had exploded. "His hair and beard were alight, his feet were burnt and the shock had sent him wild," Bazzard recalled. They dragged the victim away from the fire which had spread to farm buildings. Bazzard later received a bravery award at a ceremony at the fire brigade's headquarters. His many hobbies including ornithology, gardening, the theatre, collecting watercolours and adventurous travel. Jack Bazzard died on May 23. He married, in 1946, Barbara Watson. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their two sons and a daughter.
