MANSER, Frank Stanley (#181)
#181
Company Sergeant Major Frank "Panzer" MANSER MM
British Army
Alan Pollock’s Rough Notes:
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Company Sergeant Major Frank “Panzer” MANSER MM had wide active service beyond the DUKE of CORNWALL’s LIGHT INFANTRY & the WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT, then a “green lanyard” early PARA volunteer through No.2 COMMANDO, 11th SAS Bn, especially with H and S Troops in lst Bn PARACHUTE BRIGADE (with Colonel Alastair PEARSON, where there was much mutual respect) in NORTH AFRICA including SOUK el ARBA, TAMERA, Djebel Mansour and SICILY’s PRIMOSOLE / CATANIA, then later at ARNHEM by Dakota drop, with take-off from Bourn, where he was shot, part saved on capture by being unsupported well forward, fighting, as always, “with a Thompson machine gun and a Colt 45, a knife, and plenty of grenades in my pouches”; later escaping.
He was given a Dutch deaf and dumb identity card and civilian suit, put in a waiting room with German soldiers, to be urgently seen, by the only suitable Dutch Doctor at a German Hospital; full of praise for DUTCH GALLANTRY and the local UNDERGROUND ORGANISATION, as he was passed along, eventually re-uniformed and even given a platoon to reach the Americans at Nijmegen; he remembers, in particular, as other PARAS at ARNHEM, the two brave DUTCH KLEE BROTHERS taken away and shot.
Frank’s father was with the VETERINARY CORPS in WW1 but his mother died when he was one – he was a successful pre-war boxer, unbeaten in the Army, and his wife, EDNA, was a MUNITIONS WORKER throughout the war.