"Major Colin Bligh, who has died aged 100, saw hard fighting in the Italian Campaign and had some narrow escapes as an infantry officer and as a commander of a troop of tanks. Colin Herbert Bligh, one of three children, was born on January 31 1924 in Nyasaland (now Malawi). His father, a tobacco planter, had served with the Nyasaland Volunteers in German East Africa (now Tanganyika) in the First World War. Young Colin was educated at Caterham School in Surrey, where he played in the first XV. In April 1942, he enlisted in the Army and completed his basic training with the Young Soldiers Training Regiment at the Royal Armoured Corps Centre (RAC) in Bovington, Dorset. After the short course at Royal Military College Sandhurst, aged 19, he was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment (RTR). He subsequently embarked at Liverpool, bound for Italy. The convoy was shadowed by a German reconnaissance aircraft before being attacked by a dozen Stuka dive bombers. They docked at Taranto, and such was the shortage of infantry soldiers resulting from heavy casualties that Bligh was posted to 2/4 Battalion The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) in the rugged, mountainous country on the approaches to Monte Cassino. Bligh commanded a platoon, and on a recce patrol he had a close shave when a shell landed within a few yards of him. He felt the blast of hot air, smelled the fumes and heard the steel splinters whizzing past him. In a successful battalion night attack on a ridge, he led his platoon with a Thompson sub-machine gun in one hand and a grenade in the other, having first removed the pin with his teeth." Major Colin Bligh, tank commander who survived several near-misses in the Italian Campaign – obituary (msn.com)
