Length: 22.5cm (8.9in)
Provenance: Colonel Philip Preston OBE (1914-1973)
Copper and brass. Hunting horn engraved with the Parachute Regiment badge over the Lancashire rose and ‘Win or Die’ motto of the 13th (Lancashire) Battalion.
The present hunting horn dates to formation of the 6th Airborne Division and the conversion of 2nd/4th South Lancashire Regiment to 13th Battalion The Parachute Regiment in 1943. Lt-Col Peter Luard was brought in to command and invigorate the TA infantry battalion with ‘airborne spirit’. He used the sporting analogy of the chase in his mission to hunt down and kill the German ‘fox’. Company commanders of the South Lancs who were over the age limit for parachute training were replaced with younger men to produce the line up engraved on the present hunting horn.
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‘SECOND IN COMMAND
C.A.L. SHIPLEY
W.A.B. HARRIS
G.H.D. FORD
R. LEYLAND
P.H. PRESTON’
Given Luard’s ‘Tally Ho’ approach to leadership and his famous use of the hunting horn in Operation Tonga to rally his men at the rendezvous in Normandy on 6 June 1944, it is highly probable that the present horn and others were presented by Luard in the autumn of 1943 to each of his key officers. At that time Major ‘Moses’ Shipley was Second in Command of 13 Para but by the spring of 1944 was posted to command a Royal Fusiliers battalion in Italy. Major Bill Harris MC had been 2ic but stepped down to command ‘A’ Company in the autumn of 1943, while Major ‘Florrie’ Ford was brought in to command ‘C’ Company. Roy Leyland was a famous England rugby union international who later became 2ic to Luard in North West Europe in 1944-45, and eventually succeeded Luard in command of the battalion. Philip Preston was a former Indian Army officer with the 2nd (KEO) Gurkhas. He returned to service on the outbreak of war with a commission in the South Lancs. After arduous airborne training, he was posted to become Assistant Adjutant Quartermaster General of the 1st Airborne Division.
As such Preston took part in Operation Market Garden in September 1944 where Lt-Col John Frost of 2 Para famously carried his hunting horn into battle, sounding it at the rendezvous points on the drop zones to rally his scattered troops as they pushed to secure and hold the Arnhem bridge. One of Preston’s many duties was maintaining the 1st Airborne HQ’s War Diary which gives an hour by hour account of the operation, as seen from the perspective of Urquhart’s headquarters in the Hotel Hartenstein in Oosterbeek, through the multiple crises of communications failure, unexpectedly stiff resistance, prolonged defence, increasing casualties and POWs, and a shrinking perimeter. After eight days of sustained fighting Preston took part in the evacuation across the Lower Rhine of the remnants of the division, this being just over 2,000 of the 10,000 men who had landed on the northern side of the river.
While it is unlikely the present hunting horn accompanied its owner to Arnhem. it does bear comparison with Frost’s hunting horn (now the Airborne Museum ‘Hartenstein’) as a totem of the Airborne Forces and a proud piece of Parachute Regiment lore.