IT HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED THAT SERGEANT JOHN PATRICK KENNEALLY, WHO WON HIS VICTORIA CROSS IN NORTH AFRICA, HAS DIED IN WORCESTERSHIRE, AGED 79. |
---|
The Daily Telegraph, 28 September 2000 |
Sergeant John Kenneally VC, 1st Bn, Irish Guards, has died at his home in Rochford, Worcestershire, aged 79. Kenneally earned his Victoria Cross whilst fighting in North Africa in 1943. |
For the award of the Victoria Cross [ London Gazette, 17 August 1943 ], The Bou, Dj Arada, Tunisia, 28 April 1943, Lance Corporal John Patrick Kenneally, 1st Bn, Irish Guards.
The Bou feature dominates all ground East and West between Medjez El Bab and Tebourba. It was essential to the final assault on Tunis that this feature should be captured and held.
John Kenneally was invested with his Victoria Cross by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on the 24th May 1944.
After the engagement, various awards were published but there was no mention of a medal for Kenneally, although he was promoted to sergeant. He had hoped that he might have been awarded a Military Medal, but was philosophical when this was not forthcoming. The announcement of his VC in mid-August came as a tremendous shock to him. Many in the regiment had been interviewed and had known what was about, but it was a very well kept secret which he was the last to learn.
John Kenneally was born, he claimed, Leslie Robinson on 15th March 1921, and grew up on a farm in the north of England and was sent to the King Edward Grammer School in Birmingham for his education. There he excelled at games and was a patrol leader in the Scouts. On his 18th birthday he joined the Royal Artillery TA, and at the start of the Second World War was mobilised. He was posted to an anti-aircraft battery in Dollis Hill, north London, but this he found insufficiently exciting. Early in 1941 he fell in with some Irish labourers who persuaded him to desert and accompany them to Glasgow. They gave him an identity card bearing the name of John Patrick Kenneally, a labourer who had returned to Ireland.
The new Kenneally, having fabricated a childhood in Tipperary, then enlisted with the Irish Guards at Manchester, he had already been favourably impressed by the regiment when he had spent a week at their detention centre in Wellington Barracks after over staying a leave. The Guards, although rigorous, proved all he had hoped for. The regiment landed at Bone, North Africa, in March 1943 and almost immediately proceeded to the front at Medjez el Bab. Later they fought at Anzio, where Kenneally was again wounded. Subsequently he was stationed in Germany and, after joining the Guards Parachute Battalion, served in Palestine and Trans-Jordan before leaving the Army in the rank of Company Sergeant-Major.
After the award of his Victoria Cross Kenneally received thousands of letters from all over the world, and in 1945 was praised by Winston Churchill himself. Kenneally's VC resides with the Irish Guards RHQ, Wellington Barracks, London, and his final resting place is in his home village of Rochford, Worcestershire.
Medal entitlement of Company Sergeant Major John Kenneally - 1st Bn, Irish Guards
|
Iain Stewart, 30 September 2000