Thomas A. Bird

Major Thomas Arthur Bird DSO, MC & Bar (11 August 1918 – 9 August 2017) was a distinguished British soldier and architect whose inspirational command of the anti-tank company (‘S’ Company) of 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, at Outpost Snipe during the Second Battle of El Alamein helped destroy the armoured counter-attack of General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

‘When all seemed to be lost, there would be Dicky boy, calm and seemingly aloof from the dangers around us…’.

The Daily Sketch described Snipe as ‘the finest action of the war’.

Bird was born on 11 August 1918, in Wargrave, Berkshire, United Kingdom.

He was the younger son of Arthur and Evelyn Bird (née Huggins, a brewing family).

Arthur Bird was a company director and country squire.

Tom, as he was known, was brought up in the village of Fawley in Buckinghamshire, near Henley-on-Thames.

Bird's uncle, Arthur's brother, was Cyril Kenneth Bird, better known as Fougasse, the art editor and later editor of Punch magazine in London.

Bird's father contributed verse and doggerel (as AWB) to Punch before and during World War Two, always illustrated by Fougasse.

Bird was part of 7th Support Group (in 7th Armoured Division) who were now organised in mobile harassing ‘Jock Columns’ (a troop of 25-pdrs, a motorised infantry company, anti-tank guns, engineers), devised to cover vast acres of no-man’s land by Maj-Gen ‘Jock’ Campbell VC, who commanded the Support Group.

As the Rifle Brigade history notes of ‘Jock Columns’; ‘they learnt to penetrate areas dominated by the enemy…to make deadly and damaging thrusts…against his supply lines.’ Bird carried out numerous night patrols.

Most company commanders sent junior officers on patrols but Bird went himself.

On one he won a Military Cross.

Bird was educated at Winchester College (1931-35) where he excelled at drawing and cricket.

He opened the batting for the school’s 1st XI in his last year.

After Winchester, he attended the Architectural Association in London (1936-39 and 1946-47), his studies being interrupted by the Second World War.

He joined the Supplementary Reserve of the 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (No.79884), in 1938 as a 2nd Lieutenant.

In September 1939, while skiing in Switzerland he received a telegram from his regiment to return home as war had been declared by the Chamberlain government against Nazi Germany.

On arriving at the Regimental depot in Winchester he was immediately posted to Palestine where the Arab Revolt was still smouldering.

His first action was against Italian forces, many of whom were poorly equipped.

His elder brother Edward was killed whilst serving in the 1st Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, at Calais on 25 May, 1940, while trying to rescue wounded men trapped on a lorry whose driver had been shot.

He remains the only soldier to have witnessed two Victoria Cross actions, that of Second Lieutenant George Ward Gunn of 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery (posthumously at Sidi Rezegh in 1941) and that of Colonel Victor Buller Turner, at Snipe.

He was in the vanguard of Combeforce (led by Col John Combe of 11th Hussars) at the Battle of Beda Fomm, which dashed across 100 miles of desert to Sidi Saleh on the coast road (7 February 1941) and captured the Italian 10th Army of 20,000 (including 216 guns and 100 tanks) commanded by General Bergonzoli (‘Electric Whiskers’).

During the battle for Sidi Rezegh (November 21-23, 1941), fought to relieve Tobruk, Bird was hit in the ankle.

General Richard O'Connor, commanding 7th Armoured Division called it ‘a complete victory as none of the enemy escaped.’ In early 1942 Rommel’s Afrika Korps turned the tide of battle; he had reached Sollum and was besieging Tobruk.

In July 1942 his company was equipped with the new (‘excellent’) 6 pdr anti-tank gun and first used it at the Free French desert citadel (or ‘box’) of Bir Hakeim, which anchored the southern end of the British line, held by about 3700 of General Koenig’s 1st Free French Brigade (mostly very tough Légionnaires).

When Rommel advanced eastwards to try and take Tobruk, Bir Hakeim was in the way.

The French fought furiously against constant artillery bombardment and incessant Stuka attacks.

Rommel’s hand-written note to Koenig to surrender or ‘face destruction’ was answered by a cannon salvo which destroyed some German trucks.

Their stubborn bravery established the Free French as a fighting force, and caused Rommel considerable logistical problems.

But they became desperately short of ammunition, and Koenig’s resolve seemed to waver.

On the night of June 7/8 Bird brought in a column of 25 Royal Army Service Corps ammunition trucks with an RB escort through German lines and minefields, a hazardous operation in the dark.

He went in from the west, the enemy side, gambling that the Germans would assume the column was their own transport.

It worked, he only lost one truck.

He had with him two 6 pounders, in case he met trouble on the way in.

The Légionnaires were delighted to see these new weapons, and in Bir Hakeim gleefully pointed out targets ‘even though this brought down fire…’ Bird went to see Koenig in his dugout, who grudgingly thanked him for the supplies but said it wasn’t enough and he was going to surrender anyway.

Horrified, Bird asked that this be delayed until he could extricate his relief column that night.

He later became a noted architect working in collaboration with Richard Tyler (as Bird & Tyler Associates) from 1955 to 1985 in the neo-classical genre, having rejected an earlier flirtation with modernism.

When he recovered, Bird was made commander of ‘S’ [Support] company of 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (2RB), now equipped with 16 of its own ‘pretty useless’ 2 pounders (‘but better than nothing’), the first time a motor battalion had its own anti-tank guns – 2RB previously had to rely on 3 rd Royal Horse Artillery’s guns.

Tom Bird died at his home in Turville Heath on 9 August 2017, two days before his 99th birthday.