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5th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders
5th Battalion served with the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division and took part in the Battle for France, they were forced to surrender at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux and many men were taken POW.In August 1940 the 5th Battalion was reformed and were deployed to North Africa and later Sicily. They were recalled for the D-Day landings and on the 6th of June 1944 they landed in Normandy and fought their way, through France, Belgium and the Netherlands to Germany.
19th Apr 1940 On the Move
1st May 1940 Reliefs
5th May 1940 Reliefs 
13th May 1940 In Action
15th May 1940 Orders
20th May 1940 Withdrawal
22nd May 1940 Threat
23rd May 1940 In Reserve
24th May 1940 Orders
25th May 1940 On the Move
26th May 1940 Moves
27th May 1940 On the Move
28th May 1940 On the Move
9th Jun 1940 In Defence
10th Jun 1940 On the March
11th Jun 1940 Surrounded
11th Jun 1940 Furious Fighting
11th Jun 1940 Orders
12th Jun 1940 Situation Hopeless
If you can provide any additional information, especially on actions and locations at specific dates, please add it here.
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Want to know more about 5th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders? There are:1491 items tagged 5th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. |
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R J Hastings 5th Btn. Gordon Highlanders My father, R J Hastings was in the Gordon Highlanders 5th Btn. He was captured at St.Valery and held in StalagXX1D.
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Pte. Robert Birse 5th Btn. Gordon Highlanders On 27th of April 1936, my father, Robert Birse enlisted at Bucksburn as a lorry driver. During WW2, he was captured at St. Valery at 11am on 12th of June 1940 and taken to Stalag XXB. For some time, he worked on a farm there. He never talked much about it. On 2nd of February 1945, he escaped, this was when the Russians were approaching, he said.
After the war, he came to Australia and started an earth-moving and asphalt business. It seems that lorry driving must have stayed in his blood. In 1984, he died young, aged only 68.
He left two sons, Alastair and Robert John Birse.
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2Lt. Dennis Raymond Stewart Allward 5th Battalion Gordon Highlanders Dennis Allward was captured at St Valery. He kept a day by day diary covering his period of service and time as a POW from 1939 to 1944 which his family has recently had privately published.
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Pte. James Ironside McPherson 5th Btn. Gordon Highlanders Dad, James McPherson was interned in Stalag VIIIa worked in a Glass factory and claimed to have stopped the production by instead of closing a slide on a shute he opened it up fully thus overloading the system stopping production. Also, only once told me that the Germans experimented with TB on him. Not sure if this was the cause of him having one lung removed after release.
After the war married a nurse from the local hospital he was treated. Worked as a farm servant, drystone dyker and latterly driver handyman. Father to four sons who are all proud of him.
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Pte. Norman Burnett 5th Btn. Gordon Highlanders Norman Burnett was born in 1920 in Old Rayne, Aberdeenshire and signed up with the Gordon Highlanders as a teenager. Part of the 51st Highland Division and a member of the 5th Gordon Highlanders, he was captured at St Valery and endured the long journey ending at Stalag XXB near Marienburg. Dad was a proud soldier till the day he died at the ripe old age of 94 in Aberdeenshire. He didn't talk often about his experiences, only to tell us that he initially worked on roads and was then placed at a farm working for a family he became very fond of. At the end of the war he went by horse and cart with the family to flee from the Russians then cycled until he joined up with some American soldiers. He eventually made it back to the UK it was almost a year after the end of the war before he finally was allowed to return to Aberdeenshire.
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