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Oswin Edmund
Craster was born on June 28, 1916. and died on January 29 2006 aged 89.
Looking back over his eventful life, Oswin had what he termed a "varied
war". During the Second World War, he led Special Operations Executive (SOE) teams into France and Burma. This was one of the highlights of his service, with his exploits with the SOE a direct contrast from his work for the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, which he began on leaving university. He was educated at Stowe and New College, Oxford, where he was a member of the horsed cavalry section of the Officer Training Corps. When war threatened in 1938 he enlisted in the 5th (Territorial Army) Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and was called up on the outbreak of war. In 1943, with no active service in prospect, he put his name forward after a call for French speakers stationed in England willing to undertake "tasks of particular danger". Volunteers were to be dropped into occupied France soon after the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 He learnt
French in Lausanne before the war, which led to his recruitment for the
SOE, which he joined in January 1944. |
The three man
teams (Jedborughs) were then to form contact with the French Resistance,
arrange for weapons to be dropped to them and ensure acts of sabotage took
place which assisted Allied plans. His operational team code name
"STANLEY in the Chir region of France. Captain Craster was dropped into the Haute-Marne on September 1, 1944, where he found about 400 men sympathetic to the cause, some from the Premier Regiment de France, a group of gendarmes and 45 railway workers. He
successfully arranged a weapons drop allowing the resistance to harass
German troops passing through the area. His team was also responsible for
organising a successful air strike by four US Air Force fighters on a
German battalion. PRO file HS 9/369 |
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