Rear Admiral Edward Findlay "Teddy" Gueritz CB OBE DSC & Bar (8 September 1919 – 21 December 2008) was a long-serving Royal Navy officer.
From D-Day, 6 June 1944, he served as beachmaster on Sword Beach, organising the flow of men and materiel into the beachhead, including 30,000 troops on the first day. 19 days later he was severely wounded and evacuated to the United Kingdom where he required life-saving surgery. He had previously served in a similar role during Operation Ironclad, which captured Madagascar in 1942.
After the war he became second-in-command of HMS Saumarez, and it was due to the damage control procedures that he put in place that the ship was not lost during the Corfu Channel Incident in 1946. Later still he served on the staff of General Sir Hugh Stockwell during the Suez Crisis of 1956.
He retired from the navy in 1973, and became an academic and author. In the 1970s he also participated in an Anglo-German exercise which wargamed the plans for Operation Sea Lion, the proposed German invasion of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He also set questions for the TV quiz programme, Mastermind.
Gueritz was born on 8 September 1919. His father, Elton Laurence Gueritz,[1] was an officer of the Colonial Service, who was based in Africa (Nigeria and Gambia), and later retired to Cheltenham, and died at the age of 46 in 1931.[2][3] His mother, Eleanor Dixon Valentine Gueritz (née Findlay) lived until 1960.[4] Gueritz had three siblings, an elder brother and two older sisters. His brother, John Elton Fortescue Gueritz (b. 1911),[5][6] became a second lieutenant in the Territorial Army in 1933,[7] transferring to a regular commission in the British Indian Army in 1935.[8] There he was seconded to the Indian Political Service,[9] and was based in the princely states of Chattisgarh and Raipur.[6] With the independence of India, he left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1948.[10] He subsequently worked for the British Council in Tehran,[11] and later became Secretary of the St. John Ambulance Association in the United Kingdom.[12] Gueritz's sister Lucy Valentine Gueritz (b. 1915) married another Indian Army officer from Cheltenham, Henry Gerard Burton in 1937.[13] His other sister, Eleanor Elton Gueritz (b. 1916) served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War.[14] She was attached to the Women's Army Corps (India) and married another Indian Army officer, William Richard Feaver, in 1945.[15]
Gueritz entered Cheltenham College as an exhibitioner in 1933.[16] On leaving school he joined the Royal Navy as a special entry cadet in 1937.[17] He was appointed to HMS Ramillies on 13 April 1938,[18] and promoted to midshipman on 26 April 1938 (with seniority from 1 May).[19]
Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War he was a midshipman on the cruiser HMS Cumberland. After the Battle of the River Plate, Cumberland rejoined the squadron commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood in the blockade which resulted in the scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee.[17] Cumberland had been part of the group hunting the raider, but was refitting in the Falkland Islands at the time of the battle.
On D-Day, 6 June 1944, Gueritz went ashore on Sword Beach at 0800 as the third most senior member of the beachmaster party. His immediate superior, Commander Rowley Nichols was badly wounded, and the army liaision officer Lieutenant-Colonel D V H Board was killed almost immediately. This left Gueritz alone with the task of marshalling all the troops coming ashore, organising the landing craft and maintaining contact with the naval forces offshore. He was wearing a blue-painted helmet and a red scarf, and his sole weapon was a blackthorn walking stick.[17]
Gueritz's immediate task was to solve the problem of vehicles becoming stuck in the soft sand, and to start getting men through the exits being cleared through the minefields and barbed wire by flail tanks. To add to his problems, a further brigade came ashore at 0930, only to find that high winds were driving the tide higher than expected, reducing the space available on the beach and pushing the landing craft on to the explosive obstacles left by the Germans. Despite all this by the evening of D-Day 30,000 troops, hundreds of vehicles and tons of ammunition and other supplies had been landed and moved through the beach area.[17]
Gueritz continued his work for 19 days then, fortunately just after he had put his helmet back on, he was struck in the head by a shell fragment. Initially the seriousness of his wound was not realised, and it was only when he collapsed while he was being treated for a minor hand injury that doctors discovered that the back of his skull had been crushed. Evacuated to the United Kingdom, he was operated on at Southampton General Hospital. John Richardson, the surgeon who saved Gueritz's life, later became president of the General Medical Council and was created a life peer.[17] Gueritz was awarded a Bar to the Distinguished Service Cross he had previously been awarded. This was amongst a group of decorations awarded on 29 August 1944:[20]
ADMIRALTY.Whitehall. 29th August, 1944.
The KING has been graciously pleased to give orders for the following appointments to the Distinguished Service Order and to approve the following rewards and awards:—
For gallantry, skill, determination and undaunted devotion to duty during the initial landings of Allied Forces on the coast of Normandy:
[...]
Bar to the Distinguished Service Cross.
Acting Lieutenant-Commander Edward Findlay Gueritz, D.S.C., Royal Navy (Cheltenham).