The Class of '22 and the Ordnance supply success on D Day

This photograph has accompanied me all my life. 

I have always known who one of the young men was, my father then known as Bill Williams although he had been baptised Leslie. Of the others, I could recognise the Duke of York and the largest man in the front row, as a child, I named , ‘prawns’, I suppose because of magnificent moustache. 

When it was taken or where I didn’t know, any more than I knew the names of the other young and not so young men. All was partially revealed in 2015 when I found the same photograph in the archive of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps annotated with names. I say partially revealed because whilst the names were there, I still didn’t know who they were, whence they had come or whither they would go. 

The photograph was taken on 2 May 1922 at the then HQ of the RAOC at Hilsea and many of those in the picture were on the very first Ordnance officers course held at Woolwich . That course, comprising two dozen men from the RAOC but also the RA and Indian and Canadian Ordnance, produced no fewer than five Major-Generals and eleven Brigadiers. 

I embarked on a quest and, just in case it may seem to the reader a rather pointless quest, I can reveal that from this group would emerge the small group who masterminded the Ordnance supply success of D Day. This quest digs beneath many of the names that appear in my books, War on Wheels and Ordnance. It resulted in my book, Dunkirk to D Day.

I can now add the names of those in the photograph 

The Duke of York’s visit to Hilsea, 1922. Top row: Lt. A. Symons, Capt. A.R. Valon,

Capt. J.H.D. Sheppard*, Capt. D. Manuelle*, Major W.M. Stokes, Capt. G.W. Palmer*,

Lt. A. Knox-Wilson, Capt. H.R. Skinner. 3rd row: Capt. G.R.S. Love*,

Capt. A.M. Hidden*, Capt. L.H. Williams*, Capt. J.S. Omond*, Rev. G. Heaslett,

Capt. C.F. Cansdale*, Capt. W.K. Dines, Capt. W.W. Richards*. 2nd row: Capt.

W.E.C. Pickthall*, Rev. J. Kelly, Major F.S. Smith, Major A.C. Gibson (Equerry),

Major J. Asser, Capt. E.R. Macpherson*, Capt. D.R. Smith*, Capt. C.F.T. Haigh*.

Front row: Capt. C.W. Bacon, Lt. Colonel H.L. Wethered, Colonel R.S. Hamilton,

Major-General Sir John Stephens, HRH The Duke of York, Lt. General Sir Travers

Clarke, Major-General Sir H.D.E. Parsons, Colonel H.S. Bush, Lt. Colonel Jasper

Baker. (Class of ’22 indicated with *. RAOC officers in the Class of ’22 but not in

the photograph: Capt. P.W. Kidd, Capt. L.H. Aste.)