Service No: 68294 Rank: Lieutenant Colonel Regiment: Coldstream Guards
Awards: MBE, MC, Croix de Guerre, Mentioned in Despatches.
James Maydon "Jimmy" Langley was born in 1916 in Wolverhampton. He was the son of Francis Oswald Langley, a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was brought up in Singapore, Switzerland and Suffolk. He attended a preparatory school at Aldeburgh Lodge, moving on to Uppingham School and finally attending Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Jimmy had served as a Cadet under Officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps. In 1936, after completing his degree, he left Cambridge and joined the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on the 4th July 1936, and promoted to Lieutenant on the 4th July 1939.
Lt. Langley was mobilised on the 24th August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, in the British Expeditionary Force. He sailed for France in September as a platoon commander.
Jimmy Langley was an excellent regimental officer, earning the respect of his men. After withstanding some very severe fighting, Jimmy displayed outstanding bravery defending a bridge near Pecq in Belgium; an action that would see him awarded a Military Cross.
By now the British Army was heading for the beaches at Dunkirk. His Company Commander informed him that the battalion was to be the rear-guard at Dunkirk and form a final cordon around the town. In reality, this meant that five thousand soldiers were defending a quarter of a million retreating men against the onslaught of forty thousand Germans who by this point were only a mere six miles away. The story of the subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk will go down in history.
At the end of May 1940, Jimmy and his platoon found themselves fighting in a fierce rear-guard action. They were holed up in a cottage operating Bren guns from the attic. A shell burst on the roof and Jimmy was wounded. The bones in his left arm were shattered and he sustained a minor head injury due to a small embedded piece of shrapnel. He was placed in a wheelbarrow and splints from a wooden box were tied around his left arm. Later, put into an ambulance, he was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station on the beach. As he was unable to move from his stretcher he was refused a place on one of the ships leaving for England, as his stretcher would take up too much room.
From this moment on he effectually became "missing in action". On the 9th June 1940 Jimmy's parents were at home in Alderton when they received a telegram from the Under Secretary of State for War stating "Lieutenant J.M. Langley Reported believed missing. Further particulars will be forwarded as soon as received."
Unknown to them, Jimmy was now a Prisoner of War. On the 8th June 1940 the whole Casualty Clearing Station was moved to the hospital at Zuydcoote near the Belgian border. Jimmy was finally able to move from the stretcher. The bones of both upper and lower arms were a mass of splinters and as a consequence, a vein in his arm haemorrhaged. By incredible luck, the surgeon, Philip Newman, was only feet away and used his hand to stop the bleeding before applying a tourniquet.
The following conversation then ensued between Jimmy and the surgeon:
"Your arm will have to come off."
Must it?
Yours is the choice ... dead in 2 days from gangrene or life without an arm.
So the decision was made and the arm duly removed.
Shortly afterwards Philip Newman passed by on his evening round and said " I've left enough for you to tuck your evening paper under."
"Will I live" asked Jimmy to which the reply was "you have a 25 per cent chance, maybe less"
Years later, Jimmy told him that he didn't think much of his idea encouraging the sick.
His reply was illuminating. "My dear Jimmy, you were so damned pleased with yourself that I knew that with any further encouragement you would almost certainly have relaxed and made no further effort. I wanted to make you angry and fight."
His words probably saved Jimmy's life because he did fight and survive. The next day he crawled two hundred yards to the main gate and the German guardhouse where visitors were admitted to visit the wounded. It took two hours but he reaped the reward as local French people were allowed to go there to give the prisoners food parcels! He acquired too many to carry back but a German sentry took pity on him and sent him back with them on a stretcher. Later, in July, Jimmy was moved to a convent in Lille which was being used as a hospital. However, he was now making good progress.
Back home, there were frantic attempts to track him down through correspondence from his Commanding Officers, the Field Ambulance Service and the Red Cross. All parties sent reports on his last known whereabouts at Dunkirk. There was no further news of him for weeks, until eventually, the longed for official confirmation was received in the form of another telegram which read:
Previously reported missing now POW at Faculté de Catholique, Boulevard Verdun Lille.
Under Sec. of State for War
On the 10th October he escaped from the hospital in Lille by climbing through a small window in the porter's lodge, hanging onto the sill and dropping 12 feet into the street. Quite a feat with the use of only one arm ! He now made his escape across Europe. From Lille, he took a train to Paris, then to Lyons, through Vichy France and on to Marseilles. Whilst he was in Marseille, Jimmy worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Minister Donald Caskie.
He applied for repatriation under the Exchange of Wounded scheme. In February 1941, Jimmy Langley was declared "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board and was repatriated to England. He travelled by train via Barcelona to Gibraltar. From there, he sailed to Liverpool on HMS Scarborough. He arrived on a bitterly cold March morning and headed for London to be debriefed.
He was immediately recruited by Col. Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6, to serve as liaison officer between MI-6 and MI-9.For the remaining three years of the war he would work alongside Airey Neave, (a Colditz Castle escaper) amongst others. The unit's role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK. These operations extended to liberated POWs as their camps were overrun. It was also involved setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberated, rather than risk breaking through the front line. The organisation was also involved in "Operation Pegasus" at Arnhem. It was in this role that he first met Marguerite "Peggy" van Lier. Peggy was a member of the Belgian Resistance and had had to escape to England after the Comet line of which she was a member was betrayed. Peggy would later become Jimmy's wife.
Jimmy was promoted to Captain (war substantive) on 30 October 1943, and to Major on 14 April 1944, and then to acting-Lieutenant Colonel on 14 January 1944. He was demobilised on the 4th July 1946, and transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the rank of Lieutenant (war substantive Major), retaining his seniority. He was promoted to Major in the Reserves on the 1st January 1949. On the 12th March 1966, he had reached the service age limit, so relinquished his commission. He was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In 1944 he married Peggy van Lier who he had first encountered on the hard-standing at RAF Hendon a year ago, when she had escaped from Belgium. They had four sons and a daughter. Post war, Jimmy settled in Suffolk, and went to work for Fisons Ltd, a British multinational pharmaceutical, scientific instruments and horticultural chemicals company who had their Headquarters in Ipswich. He attended Harvard Business School. He worked for Fisons Ltd until 1967 when he left to open the Debden bookshop in Woodbridge with Peggy, and later took over The Ancient House Bookshop in Ipswich. Jimmy became an author and wrote a book about his wartime service. It is called "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley. Despite losing an arm Jimmy was a keen shot. His other interests were collecting Amber and reviewing books. He retired in 1976, and sadly died in 1983. His wife Peggy died in 2000.
For his war service Jimmy Langley was awarded numerous honours:
On the 20th December 1940 he was awarded the Military Cross "in recognition of gallant conduct in action with the enemy" in France.
The citation reads as follows:
On the 20th and 21st May 1940, at Pecq, on the Scheldt, Lieutenant Langley's platoon held the most critical point of his battalion line. In a very exposed position, subjected to heavy mortar fire and close sniping, this platoon took heavy toll of the enemy. Lieutenant Langley was the inspiration of his men. He handled his Bren guns with consummate skill and showed a fearlessness and disregard for personal danger which was an example to all ranks.
On the 29th April 1941 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "in recognition of distinguished services in the field".
On the 2nd August 1945 he received a mention in dispatches "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe".
His wife Peggy was also highly decorated being awarded the MBE, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the Netherlands Resistance Cross.
(researched online with information courtesy of Wikipedia, Cheryl Gray's article in Village Life Magazine Nov 2015 issue, (www.villagevoices.org.uk ) & finally reading Jimmy's book entitled "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley, myself)
.
Awards: MBE, MC, Croix de Guerre, Mentioned in Despatches.
James Maydon "Jimmy" Langley was born in 1916 in Wolverhampton. He was the son of Francis Oswald Langley, a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was brought up in Singapore, Switzerland and Suffolk. He attended a preparatory school at Aldeburgh Lodge, moving on to Uppingham School and finally attending Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Jimmy had served as a Cadet under Officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps. In 1936, after completing his degree, he left Cambridge and joined the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on the 4th July 1936, and promoted to Lieutenant on the 4th July 1939.
Lt. Langley was mobilised on the 24th August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, in the British Expeditionary Force. He sailed for France in September as a platoon commander.
Jimmy Langley was an excellent regimental officer, earning the respect of his men. After withstanding some very severe fighting, Jimmy displayed outstanding bravery defending a bridge near Pecq in Belgium; an action that would see him awarded a Military Cross.
By now the British Army was heading for the beaches at Dunkirk. His Company Commander informed him that the battalion was to be the rear-guard at Dunkirk and form a final cordon around the town. In reality, this meant that five thousand soldiers were defending a quarter of a million retreating men against the onslaught of forty thousand Germans who by this point were only a mere six miles away. The story of the subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk will go down in history.
At the end of May 1940, Jimmy and his platoon found themselves fighting in a fierce rear-guard action. They were holed up in a cottage operating Bren guns from the attic. A shell burst on the roof and Jimmy was wounded. The bones in his left arm were shattered and he sustained a minor head injury due to a small embedded piece of shrapnel. He was placed in a wheelbarrow and splints from a wooden box were tied around his left arm. Later, put into an ambulance, he was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station on the beach. As he was unable to move from his stretcher he was refused a place on one of the ships leaving for England, as his stretcher would take up too much room.
From this moment on he effectually became "missing in action". On the 9th June 1940 Jimmy's parents were at home in Alderton when they received a telegram from the Under Secretary of State for War stating "Lieutenant J.M. Langley Reported believed missing. Further particulars will be forwarded as soon as received."
Unknown to them, Jimmy was now a Prisoner of War. On the 8th June 1940 the whole Casualty Clearing Station was moved to the hospital at Zuydcoote near the Belgian border. Jimmy was finally able to move from the stretcher. The bones of both upper and lower arms were a mass of splinters and as a consequence, a vein in his arm haemorrhaged. By incredible luck, the surgeon, Philip Newman, was only feet away and used his hand to stop the bleeding before applying a tourniquet.
The following conversation then ensued between Jimmy and the surgeon:
"Your arm will have to come off."
Must it?
Yours is the choice ... dead in 2 days from gangrene or life without an arm.
So the decision was made and the arm duly removed.
Shortly afterwards Philip Newman passed by on his evening round and said " I've left enough for you to tuck your evening paper under."
"Will I live" asked Jimmy to which the reply was "you have a 25 per cent chance, maybe less"
Years later, Jimmy told him that he didn't think much of his idea encouraging the sick.
His reply was illuminating. "My dear Jimmy, you were so damned pleased with yourself that I knew that with any further encouragement you would almost certainly have relaxed and made no further effort. I wanted to make you angry and fight."
His words probably saved Jimmy's life because he did fight and survive. The next day he crawled two hundred yards to the main gate and the German guardhouse where visitors were admitted to visit the wounded. It took two hours but he reaped the reward as local French people were allowed to go there to give the prisoners food parcels! He acquired too many to carry back but a German sentry took pity on him and sent him back with them on a stretcher. Later, in July, Jimmy was moved to a convent in Lille which was being used as a hospital. However, he was now making good progress.
Back home, there were frantic attempts to track him down through correspondence from his Commanding Officers, the Field Ambulance Service and the Red Cross. All parties sent reports on his last known whereabouts at Dunkirk. There was no further news of him for weeks, until eventually, the longed for official confirmation was received in the form of another telegram which read:
Previously reported missing now POW at Faculté de Catholique, Boulevard Verdun Lille.
Under Sec. of State for War
On the 10th October he escaped from the hospital in Lille by climbing through a small window in the porter's lodge, hanging onto the sill and dropping 12 feet into the street. Quite a feat with the use of only one arm ! He now made his escape across Europe. From Lille, he took a train to Paris, then to Lyons, through Vichy France and on to Marseilles. Whilst he was in Marseille, Jimmy worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Minister Donald Caskie.
He applied for repatriation under the Exchange of Wounded scheme. In February 1941, Jimmy Langley was declared "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board and was repatriated to England. He travelled by train via Barcelona to Gibraltar. From there, he sailed to Liverpool on HMS Scarborough. He arrived on a bitterly cold March morning and headed for London to be debriefed.
He was immediately recruited by Col. Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6, to serve as liaison officer between MI-6 and MI-9.For the remaining three years of the war he would work alongside Airey Neave, (a Colditz Castle escaper) amongst others. The unit's role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK. These operations extended to liberated POWs as their camps were overrun. It was also involved setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberated, rather than risk breaking through the front line. The organisation was also involved in "Operation Pegasus" at Arnhem. It was in this role that he first met Marguerite "Peggy" van Lier. Peggy was a member of the Belgian Resistance and had had to escape to England after the Comet line of which she was a member was betrayed. Peggy would later become Jimmy's wife.
Jimmy was promoted to Captain (war substantive) on 30 October 1943, and to Major on 14 April 1944, and then to acting-Lieutenant Colonel on 14 January 1944. He was demobilised on the 4th July 1946, and transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the rank of Lieutenant (war substantive Major), retaining his seniority. He was promoted to Major in the Reserves on the 1st January 1949. On the 12th March 1966, he had reached the service age limit, so relinquished his commission. He was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In 1944 he married Peggy van Lier who he had first encountered on the hard-standing at RAF Hendon a year ago, when she had escaped from Belgium. They had four sons and a daughter. Post war, Jimmy settled in Suffolk, and went to work for Fisons Ltd, a British multinational pharmaceutical, scientific instruments and horticultural chemicals company who had their Headquarters in Ipswich. He attended Harvard Business School. He worked for Fisons Ltd until 1967 when he left to open the Debden bookshop in Woodbridge with Peggy, and later took over The Ancient House Bookshop in Ipswich. Jimmy became an author and wrote a book about his wartime service. It is called "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley. Despite losing an arm Jimmy was a keen shot. His other interests were collecting Amber and reviewing books. He retired in 1976, and sadly died in 1983. His wife Peggy died in 2000.
For his war service Jimmy Langley was awarded numerous honours:
On the 20th December 1940 he was awarded the Military Cross "in recognition of gallant conduct in action with the enemy" in France.
The citation reads as follows:
On the 20th and 21st May 1940, at Pecq, on the Scheldt, Lieutenant Langley's platoon held the most critical point of his battalion line. In a very exposed position, subjected to heavy mortar fire and close sniping, this platoon took heavy toll of the enemy. Lieutenant Langley was the inspiration of his men. He handled his Bren guns with consummate skill and showed a fearlessness and disregard for personal danger which was an example to all ranks.
On the 29th April 1941 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "in recognition of distinguished services in the field".
On the 2nd August 1945 he received a mention in dispatches "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe".
His wife Peggy was also highly decorated being awarded the MBE, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the Netherlands Resistance Cross.
(researched online with information courtesy of Wikipedia, Cheryl Gray's article in Village Life Magazine Nov 2015 issue, (www.villagevoices.org.uk ) & finally reading Jimmy's book entitled "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley, myself)
.
Service No: 68294 Rank: Lieutenant Colonel Regiment: Coldstream Guards
Awards: MBE, MC, Croix de Guerre, Mentioned in Despatches.
James Maydon "Jimmy" Langley was born in 1916 in Wolverhampton. He was the son of Francis Oswald Langley, a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was brought up in Singapore, Switzerland and Suffolk. He attended a preparatory school at Aldeburgh Lodge, moving on to Uppingham School and finally attending Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Jimmy had served as a Cadet under Officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps. In 1936, after completing his degree, he left Cambridge and joined the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on the 4th July 1936, and promoted to Lieutenant on the 4th July 1939.
Lt. Langley was mobilised on the 24th August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, in the British Expeditionary Force. He sailed for France in September as a platoon commander.
Jimmy Langley was an excellent regimental officer, earning the respect of his men. After withstanding some very severe fighting, Jimmy displayed outstanding bravery defending a bridge near Pecq in Belgium; an action that would see him awarded a Military Cross.
By now the British Army was heading for the beaches at Dunkirk. His Company Commander informed him that the battalion was to be the rear-guard at Dunkirk and form a final cordon around the town. In reality, this meant that five thousand soldiers were defending a quarter of a million retreating men against the onslaught of forty thousand Germans who by this point were only a mere six miles away. The story of the subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk will go down in history.
At the end of May 1940, Jimmy and his platoon found themselves fighting in a fierce rear-guard action. They were holed up in a cottage operating Bren guns from the attic. A shell burst on the roof and Jimmy was wounded. The bones in his left arm were shattered and he sustained a minor head injury due to a small embedded piece of shrapnel. He was placed in a wheelbarrow and splints from a wooden box were tied around his left arm. Later, put into an ambulance, he was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station on the beach. As he was unable to move from his stretcher he was refused a place on one of the ships leaving for England, as his stretcher would take up too much room.
From this moment on he effectually became "missing in action". On the 9th June 1940 Jimmy's parents were at home in Alderton when they received a telegram from the Under Secretary of State for War stating "Lieutenant J.M. Langley Reported believed missing. Further particulars will be forwarded as soon as received."
Unknown to them, Jimmy was now a Prisoner of War. On the 8th June 1940 the whole Casualty Clearing Station was moved to the hospital at Zuydcoote near the Belgian border. Jimmy was finally able to move from the stretcher. The bones of both upper and lower arms were a mass of splinters and as a consequence, a vein in his arm haemorrhaged. By incredible luck, the surgeon, Philip Newman, was only feet away and used his hand to stop the bleeding before applying a tourniquet.
The following conversation then ensued between Jimmy and the surgeon:
"Your arm will have to come off."
Must it?
Yours is the choice ... dead in 2 days from gangrene or life without an arm.
So the decision was made and the arm duly removed.
Shortly afterwards Philip Newman passed by on his evening round and said " I've left enough for you to tuck your evening paper under."
"Will I live" asked Jimmy to which the reply was "you have a 25 per cent chance, maybe less"
Years later, Jimmy told him that he didn't think much of his idea encouraging the sick.
His reply was illuminating. "My dear Jimmy, you were so damned pleased with yourself that I knew that with any further encouragement you would almost certainly have relaxed and made no further effort. I wanted to make you angry and fight."
His words probably saved Jimmy's life because he did fight and survive. The next day he crawled two hundred yards to the main gate and the German guardhouse where visitors were admitted to visit the wounded. It took two hours but he reaped the reward as local French people were allowed to go there to give the prisoners food parcels! He acquired too many to carry back but a German sentry took pity on him and sent him back with them on a stretcher. Later, in July, Jimmy was moved to a convent in Lille which was being used as a hospital. However, he was now making good progress.
Back home, there were frantic attempts to track him down through correspondence from his Commanding Officers, the Field Ambulance Service and the Red Cross. All parties sent reports on his last known whereabouts at Dunkirk. There was no further news of him for weeks, until eventually, the longed for official confirmation was received in the form of another telegram which read:
Previously reported missing now POW at Faculté de Catholique, Boulevard Verdun Lille.
Under Sec. of State for War
On the 10th October he escaped from the hospital in Lille by climbing through a small window in the porter's lodge, hanging onto the sill and dropping 12 feet into the street. Quite a feat with the use of only one arm ! He now made his escape across Europe. From Lille, he took a train to Paris, then to Lyons, through Vichy France and on to Marseilles. Whilst he was in Marseille, Jimmy worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Minister Donald Caskie.
He applied for repatriation under the Exchange of Wounded scheme. In February 1941, Jimmy Langley was declared "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board and was repatriated to England. He travelled by train via Barcelona to Gibraltar. From there, he sailed to Liverpool on HMS Scarborough. He arrived on a bitterly cold March morning and headed for London to be debriefed.
He was immediately recruited by Col. Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6, to serve as liaison officer between MI-6 and MI-9.For the remaining three years of the war he would work alongside Airey Neave, (a Colditz Castle escaper) amongst others. The unit's role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK. These operations extended to liberated POWs as their camps were overrun. It was also involved setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberated, rather than risk breaking through the front line. The organisation was also involved in "Operation Pegasus" at Arnhem. It was in this role that he first met Marguerite "Peggy" van Lier. Peggy was a member of the Belgian Resistance and had had to escape to England after the Comet line of which she was a member was betrayed. Peggy would later become Jimmy's wife.
Jimmy was promoted to Captain (war substantive) on 30 October 1943, and to Major on 14 April 1944, and then to acting-Lieutenant Colonel on 14 January 1944. He was demobilised on the 4th July 1946, and transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the rank of Lieutenant (war substantive Major), retaining his seniority. He was promoted to Major in the Reserves on the 1st January 1949. On the 12th March 1966, he had reached the service age limit, so relinquished his commission. He was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In 1944 he married Peggy van Lier who he had first encountered on the hard-standing at RAF Hendon a year ago, when she had escaped from Belgium. They had four sons and a daughter. Post war, Jimmy settled in Suffolk, and went to work for Fisons Ltd, a British multinational pharmaceutical, scientific instruments and horticultural chemicals company who had their Headquarters in Ipswich. He attended Harvard Business School. He worked for Fisons Ltd until 1967 when he left to open the Debden bookshop in Woodbridge with Peggy, and later took over The Ancient House Bookshop in Ipswich. Jimmy became an author and wrote a book about his wartime service. It is called "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley. Despite losing an arm Jimmy was a keen shot. His other interests were collecting Amber and reviewing books. He retired in 1976, and sadly died in 1983. His wife Peggy died in 2000.
For his war service Jimmy Langley was awarded numerous honours:
On the 20th December 1940 he was awarded the Military Cross "in recognition of gallant conduct in action with the enemy" in France.
The citation reads as follows:
On the 20th and 21st May 1940, at Pecq, on the Scheldt, Lieutenant Langley's platoon held the most critical point of his battalion line. In a very exposed position, subjected to heavy mortar fire and close sniping, this platoon took heavy toll of the enemy. Lieutenant Langley was the inspiration of his men. He handled his Bren guns with consummate skill and showed a fearlessness and disregard for personal danger which was an example to all ranks.
On the 29th April 1941 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "in recognition of distinguished services in the field".
On the 2nd August 1945 he received a mention in dispatches "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe".
His wife Peggy was also highly decorated being awarded the MBE, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the Netherlands Resistance Cross.
(researched online with information courtesy of Wikipedia, Cheryl Gray's article in Village Life Magazine Nov 2015 issue, (www.villagevoices.org.uk ) & finally reading Jimmy's book entitled "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley, myself)
.
Awards: MBE, MC, Croix de Guerre, Mentioned in Despatches.
James Maydon "Jimmy" Langley was born in 1916 in Wolverhampton. He was the son of Francis Oswald Langley, a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was brought up in Singapore, Switzerland and Suffolk. He attended a preparatory school at Aldeburgh Lodge, moving on to Uppingham School and finally attending Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Jimmy had served as a Cadet under Officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps. In 1936, after completing his degree, he left Cambridge and joined the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on the 4th July 1936, and promoted to Lieutenant on the 4th July 1939.
Lt. Langley was mobilised on the 24th August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, in the British Expeditionary Force. He sailed for France in September as a platoon commander.
Jimmy Langley was an excellent regimental officer, earning the respect of his men. After withstanding some very severe fighting, Jimmy displayed outstanding bravery defending a bridge near Pecq in Belgium; an action that would see him awarded a Military Cross.
By now the British Army was heading for the beaches at Dunkirk. His Company Commander informed him that the battalion was to be the rear-guard at Dunkirk and form a final cordon around the town. In reality, this meant that five thousand soldiers were defending a quarter of a million retreating men against the onslaught of forty thousand Germans who by this point were only a mere six miles away. The story of the subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk will go down in history.
At the end of May 1940, Jimmy and his platoon found themselves fighting in a fierce rear-guard action. They were holed up in a cottage operating Bren guns from the attic. A shell burst on the roof and Jimmy was wounded. The bones in his left arm were shattered and he sustained a minor head injury due to a small embedded piece of shrapnel. He was placed in a wheelbarrow and splints from a wooden box were tied around his left arm. Later, put into an ambulance, he was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station on the beach. As he was unable to move from his stretcher he was refused a place on one of the ships leaving for England, as his stretcher would take up too much room.
From this moment on he effectually became "missing in action". On the 9th June 1940 Jimmy's parents were at home in Alderton when they received a telegram from the Under Secretary of State for War stating "Lieutenant J.M. Langley Reported believed missing. Further particulars will be forwarded as soon as received."
Unknown to them, Jimmy was now a Prisoner of War. On the 8th June 1940 the whole Casualty Clearing Station was moved to the hospital at Zuydcoote near the Belgian border. Jimmy was finally able to move from the stretcher. The bones of both upper and lower arms were a mass of splinters and as a consequence, a vein in his arm haemorrhaged. By incredible luck, the surgeon, Philip Newman, was only feet away and used his hand to stop the bleeding before applying a tourniquet.
The following conversation then ensued between Jimmy and the surgeon:
"Your arm will have to come off."
Must it?
Yours is the choice ... dead in 2 days from gangrene or life without an arm.
So the decision was made and the arm duly removed.
Shortly afterwards Philip Newman passed by on his evening round and said " I've left enough for you to tuck your evening paper under."
"Will I live" asked Jimmy to which the reply was "you have a 25 per cent chance, maybe less"
Years later, Jimmy told him that he didn't think much of his idea encouraging the sick.
His reply was illuminating. "My dear Jimmy, you were so damned pleased with yourself that I knew that with any further encouragement you would almost certainly have relaxed and made no further effort. I wanted to make you angry and fight."
His words probably saved Jimmy's life because he did fight and survive. The next day he crawled two hundred yards to the main gate and the German guardhouse where visitors were admitted to visit the wounded. It took two hours but he reaped the reward as local French people were allowed to go there to give the prisoners food parcels! He acquired too many to carry back but a German sentry took pity on him and sent him back with them on a stretcher. Later, in July, Jimmy was moved to a convent in Lille which was being used as a hospital. However, he was now making good progress.
Back home, there were frantic attempts to track him down through correspondence from his Commanding Officers, the Field Ambulance Service and the Red Cross. All parties sent reports on his last known whereabouts at Dunkirk. There was no further news of him for weeks, until eventually, the longed for official confirmation was received in the form of another telegram which read:
Previously reported missing now POW at Faculté de Catholique, Boulevard Verdun Lille.
Under Sec. of State for War
On the 10th October he escaped from the hospital in Lille by climbing through a small window in the porter's lodge, hanging onto the sill and dropping 12 feet into the street. Quite a feat with the use of only one arm ! He now made his escape across Europe. From Lille, he took a train to Paris, then to Lyons, through Vichy France and on to Marseilles. Whilst he was in Marseille, Jimmy worked as a courier for the escape line run by the Scottish officer Ian Garrow and Minister Donald Caskie.
He applied for repatriation under the Exchange of Wounded scheme. In February 1941, Jimmy Langley was declared "unfit for further military service" by a Medical Board and was repatriated to England. He travelled by train via Barcelona to Gibraltar. From there, he sailed to Liverpool on HMS Scarborough. He arrived on a bitterly cold March morning and headed for London to be debriefed.
He was immediately recruited by Col. Claude Dansey into the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6, to serve as liaison officer between MI-6 and MI-9.For the remaining three years of the war he would work alongside Airey Neave, (a Colditz Castle escaper) amongst others. The unit's role was to organise escape and evasion, setting up reception centres, collating intelligence and organising the return of personnel to the UK. These operations extended to liberated POWs as their camps were overrun. It was also involved setting up "safe areas" behind enemy lines in which men could congregate until liberated, rather than risk breaking through the front line. The organisation was also involved in "Operation Pegasus" at Arnhem. It was in this role that he first met Marguerite "Peggy" van Lier. Peggy was a member of the Belgian Resistance and had had to escape to England after the Comet line of which she was a member was betrayed. Peggy would later become Jimmy's wife.
Jimmy was promoted to Captain (war substantive) on 30 October 1943, and to Major on 14 April 1944, and then to acting-Lieutenant Colonel on 14 January 1944. He was demobilised on the 4th July 1946, and transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers with the rank of Lieutenant (war substantive Major), retaining his seniority. He was promoted to Major in the Reserves on the 1st January 1949. On the 12th March 1966, he had reached the service age limit, so relinquished his commission. He was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In 1944 he married Peggy van Lier who he had first encountered on the hard-standing at RAF Hendon a year ago, when she had escaped from Belgium. They had four sons and a daughter. Post war, Jimmy settled in Suffolk, and went to work for Fisons Ltd, a British multinational pharmaceutical, scientific instruments and horticultural chemicals company who had their Headquarters in Ipswich. He attended Harvard Business School. He worked for Fisons Ltd until 1967 when he left to open the Debden bookshop in Woodbridge with Peggy, and later took over The Ancient House Bookshop in Ipswich. Jimmy became an author and wrote a book about his wartime service. It is called "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley. Despite losing an arm Jimmy was a keen shot. His other interests were collecting Amber and reviewing books. He retired in 1976, and sadly died in 1983. His wife Peggy died in 2000.
For his war service Jimmy Langley was awarded numerous honours:
On the 20th December 1940 he was awarded the Military Cross "in recognition of gallant conduct in action with the enemy" in France.
The citation reads as follows:
On the 20th and 21st May 1940, at Pecq, on the Scheldt, Lieutenant Langley's platoon held the most critical point of his battalion line. In a very exposed position, subjected to heavy mortar fire and close sniping, this platoon took heavy toll of the enemy. Lieutenant Langley was the inspiration of his men. He handled his Bren guns with consummate skill and showed a fearlessness and disregard for personal danger which was an example to all ranks.
On the 29th April 1941 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "in recognition of distinguished services in the field".
On the 2nd August 1945 he received a mention in dispatches "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North West Europe".
His wife Peggy was also highly decorated being awarded the MBE, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the Netherlands Resistance Cross.
(researched online with information courtesy of Wikipedia, Cheryl Gray's article in Village Life Magazine Nov 2015 issue, (www.villagevoices.org.uk ) & finally reading Jimmy's book entitled "Fight Another Day" by J.M.Langley, myself)
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