DE BURGH, Michael Graham 1923-2023
Richard R
He was s of Lt-Col Hugo Graham DE BURGH OBE MC 1894-1954 scion of that Irish gentry family and his 1st w Mary Eleanor Ormston 1899-1965 d of Richard Scott LAMB 1866-1903 scion of that gentry family of Knighton Manor, and as her 1st h Eleanor Maud Vernon CUPPAGE 1869-1952 scion of that Irish gentry family.and of the VERNON of Clontarf Castle Irish gentry family. He m 1950 Penelope Ann b 1927 d of Lt-Col Francis Gerard Luis FAIRLIE 1899-1983 scion of that gentry family of Myers and Joan Mary 1902-92 d of Charles John ROSKELL 1849-1927 of Kensington, London by his 1898 m to Mary Elizabeth LYNCH 1865-1912, and had three sons and a dau as above.
LoopyCrown3
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He and Maeve Emily Davison, nee de Burgh (mother of Chris de B), were 4th cousins to Sir Reresby Sitwell (1927-2009) and Francis Sitwell (1935-2004) via their common ancestor, the 3rd Earl of Donoughmore.
colinp
Michael de Burgh, tank commander who saw heavy fighting during the Allied advance through Italy – obituary
Once, while answering a call of nature in a wood, he was surprised by two Germans – but, brandishing his spade, he took them prisoner
Michael de Burgh, who has died aged 100, was believed to be the last surviving member of any antecedent regiment of the Royal Lancers who saw active service in the Second World War….
Michael Graham de Burgh, the son of Colonel HG de Burgh, OBE, MC, was born in Norwich on June 11 1923. His father, a gunner officer, was awarded an MC at Ypres in the First World War. In the Second World War he was captured and, after the Italian Armistice, as Senior British Officer, on 10 minutes’ notice, he marched out the PoWs as a battalion from the camp at Fontanellato where they had been held, taking more than 600 men with him….
After the war, De Burgh worked for Arbuthnot Latham, the merchant bank, before moving to Tanganyika (now the United Republic of Tanzania) in 1950 to grow sisal. He subsequently returned to London and worked for Guinness for 20 years before retiring in 1985.
In retirement in Sussex he ran a trout farm and devoted much of his time to working with the sick and disabled, becoming a Hospitaller de Notre Dame de Lourdes.
On June 8 this year, the day that Queen Camilla became Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Lancers, he was awarded an honorary Buchan Medal by her at Clarence House. The Medal commemorates Lieutenant Patrick (Paddy) Buchan, an exact contemporary of De Burgh who was killed in action in Italy on September 10 1944.
Michael de Burgh married, in 1950, Penelope Fairlie, the daughter of Joan Fairlie and Lieutenant-Colonel Gerard Fairlie, who continued the Bulldog Drummond series of books after the death of HC McNeile (“Sapper”). She predeceased Michael and he is survived by a daughter and two sons. Another son predeceased him.
Michael de Burgh, born June 11 1923, died July 21 2023
Richard R
Obit in the Times of 28 Aug 2023:
E X T R A C T
Michael de Burgh obituary
Tank commander and last surviving member of any regiment of lancers to see active service in the Second World War
…Michael Graham de Burgh was born in Norwich in 1923, the elder of two sons of a family of five. His father, Colonel Hugo de Burgh, from an old (Irish) Protestant Ascendancy family, had won the Military Cross with the Royal Horse Artillery in France in 1916, was captured in north Africa in the Second World War, and after the Italian armistice led the escape of 600 PoWs from the camp at Fontanellato near Parma. In 1917, however, to the dismay of his family, he had married Eleanor Lamb, just 17 and from an Irish Catholic gentry family. Accordingly, Michael was educated by the Jesuits at Beaumont College, Old Windsor.
In 1950 he married Penelope Fairlie, whom he had known since childhood, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Fairlie, an Old Gregorian (old boy of Downside, the Somerset school run by Benedictine monks) and former Scots Guards officer who continued the Bulldog Drummond series of books after the death of HC McNeile (“Sapper”), who had reputedly based his character on Fairlie. They were married in the Brompton Oratory in London, as his parents had been, and honeymooned in Rome. On displaying an evident excess of connubial affection at the papal general audience in St Peter’s Square, however, they were ejected by one of the Vatican gendarmerie. Undismayed, de Burgh contacted an old family friend, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, “The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican” who had saved thousands of lives including escaped Allied PoWs. Next day, the couple had a private audience of Pope Pius XII.
Penelope died in 1997. He is survived by a daughter and two sons, a third having predeceased him: Melony Collins, mother of five and widow of Christopher Collins, founder of Code Securities, a life-science specialist; Shaun, who lives at the family home in Sussex; and Luan, a business communication speaker…
…On June 8, 2023, six weeks before de Burgh’s death, and the day she became colonel-in-chief of the Royal Lancers, into which 9L had been successively amalgamated, the Queen presented him with the Buchan Medal commemorating Lieutenant Paddy Buchan, an exact contemporary of his, killed in action in 1944. De Burgh is believed to have been the last surviving member of any regiment of lancers to see active service in the Second World War.
Michael de Burgh, wartime lancer officer, was born on June 11, 1923. He died on July 21, 2023, aged 100
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/michael-de-burgh-obituary-jphdkn63p