Lionel “Bill” Bellamy was a 20-year-old regular officer with the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars when they landed on “Gold” beach on 9 June 1944, three days after D-Day, as part of the Normandy invasion.
He was in charge of an echelon squadron, providing backup, fuel and ammunition for the front line troops of the Seventh Armoured Division.
But within days of landing, after several of his regiment’s officers had been killed, he was put in command of a troop of Cromwell tanks. Bellamy pushed them forward, amid regular close combat with German forces, through Belgium, Holland and Germany, and eventually into the heart of Berlin.
He was still only 21 when, as part of the initial occupying force, he was one of the first British officers to walk through Hitler’s study, littered with the Führer’s papers and photographs, some of which the young Bellamy guiltily stuffed into his battledress as souvenirs.
Bellamy led his troop in many major combat actions in the push towards the Rhine, including the battle for Villers-Bocage, near Bayeux, the massive Operation Goodwood near Caen in July 1944, Operation Bluecoat to capture Mont Pinçon, the breakthroughs into Belgium and Holland and the invasion of Germany itself.
On 5 March 1945, he received the Military Cross, presented personally by Field Marshal Montgomery, for his bravery during the battle for the hamlet of Doornhoek, near St. Joost in Holland, in October 1944. Under heavy German machine-gun, mortar and shell fire, and in a minefield, Bellamy got his burning tank and crew to safety before overrunning enemy positions to allow infantrymen to push through.
Only three days after receiving the MC, Bellamy learnt that his mother, who lived in west London but was assisting the war effort by helping to get supplies to the troops from Smithfield meat market on Charterhouse Street, had been among 100 people killed by one of the last Nazi V-2 rockets to land in the capital.
