Roger Muirhead was not the last veteran of the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942, but he was probably the last of the few who went on to serve in Italy, France and the Low Countries, and then the Far East.
For the British, the victorious counteroffensive in the Egyptian desert was the turning-point of the war — “the end of the beginning”, as Churchill called it. Church bells had not rung since June 1940, being saved in case needed to signal a German invasion. But with Rommel’s Afrika Korps in full retreat, and Montgomery’s Eighth Army in pursuit, the prime minister authorised their mass ringing across the land.
For Muirhead, a 21-year-old subaltern in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), Alamein was a baptism of fire: a fortnight’s slogging match with Rommel’s army, some 116,000 men, 540 tanks, 1,000 artillery pieces and anti-tank guns, including the devastating “88” flak gun turned tank-destroyer. Although the RASC, a logistic corps, were sometimes disparaged as “jam stealers” and their lorry-borne role prompted the nickname “Pickford’s Hussars”, without their dedication to bringing forward combat supplies — ammunition, fuel and rations — battle could not be continued. RASC personnel were classified as combatants.
Muirhead had been commissioned in August 1941 but spent the next nine months training in England before being posted to Number 524 Company RASC in the 50th (Northumbrian) Division. Muirhead joined the “Tyne-Tees”, as they were known, in September the following year, where they were holding the southern end of the defensive line at El Alamein, almost at the gates of Alexandria and Cairo, after Rommel chased the army out of Libya. Montgomery, who had arrived in the desert the month before to take command, had halted Rommel’s renewed offensive at the end of August and begun at once on his plans for the counterattack.
Initially during the battle, Muirhead’s company was in support of 151 Brigade, comprising three battalions of the Durham Light Infantry, facing the formidable Italian Folgore (“Lightning”) Division — paratroopers — who repulsed the Northumbrian Division’s (with two others) attack. The company was then sent north to support one of the two Australian divisions, where Muirhead was put in command of the ammunition supply point near El Alamein railway halt, subject to much aerial and artillery strafing.
After the battle, Muirhead was hospitalised in Alexandria with infective hepatitis. Rather than wait for orders when he was discharged, he hitched a lift in the guard’s van of a train to Tobruk, rejoining the division for the final battles to eject the Axis from north Africa.
Once the southern shores of the Mediterranean were in Allied hands, in April 1943 the division returned to Alexandria, a 2,000 mile, 14-day journey by poor roads, to re-equip for the invasion of Sicily. After training for amphibious landings on the Great Bitter Lake north of Suez, in July, Muirhead, back in command of an ammunition supply platoon, embarked at Port Said for Operation Husky, the first definitive footing on Occupied Europe. High winds scattered the seaborne and airborne landings during the night of the 9th to 10th, but by the 12th, when Muirhead’s company landed south of Syracuse in the east of the island, the division had managed to begin its advance inland. Opposition remained light, although Muirhead’s platoon was involved in a skirmish at night with American paratroopers who had been blown off course. The Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica were still active, however, and Muirhead had the unhappy experience of seeing a ship that had been carrying the company’s alcohol bombed after he spent all the messing funds buying it in Alexandria.
After the German evacuation of Sicily, and the Italian surrender, Muirhead and his platoon crossed to the mainland in late September and on to Bari on the Adriatic coast. Here he finally had an encounter with the now legendary “Monty” when his platoon, clearing out a blocked culvert, halted an approaching staff car. Out leapt the general demanding an explanation. Muirhead explained as best he could. Monty briskly told him to carry on and gave him a carton of cigarettes — one of his party tricks — to distribute among the platoon.
At Bari the division learnt that they would be returning to England to prepare for the coming invasion of occupied France. On the voyage back they were told to remove all insignia to preserve security, which proved futile on entering Liverpool Docks in November to a large banner proclaiming “Welcome Home 50th Division.”
Soon afterwards, the new divisional commander issued what was intended to be an inspiring message: “The time is at hand to strike — to break the western wall and into the continent of Europe. To you, officers and men of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, has been given the great honour of being in the vanguard of this mighty blow for freedom.” It was not universally well received in the ranks. The division had been in continual action for three years. In the invasion of Sicily alone they had taken a thousand casualties killed or missing, and 1,100 wounded out of a “paper” strength of 18,000. But Montgomery, who had himself been brought back from Italy to command the landings, wanted a leavening of seasoned troops and he had formed a high opinion of the 50th.
In the event, on June 6, 1944, in the assault on Gold Beach, men of the division would win a VC (the only one awarded on D-Day), 32 Military Medals, 15 Military Crosses, six DSOs (Companions of the Distinguished Service Order) and three Distinguished Conduct Medals (second only to the VC). The advance inland from the beachheads was slow at first, however, and Muirhead’s company did not land until August. A week later he was hospitalised again with a recurrence of malaria, but rejoined his company in October in the Netherlands, on the southern shore of the Scheldt estuary to take part in the battle to open up the port of Antwerp, crucial for resupply of the Allied armies.
By November, Field Marshal (as he now was) Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was running seriously short of infantry, without which, as he always said, “You can do nothing at all.” Junior officer casualties had been higher than expected, and volunteers to transfer were called for. Muirhead answered the call. While undergoing conversion training on the Isle of Man, however, volunteers for the several logistic corps were sought to reinforce the 14th Army (“The Forgotten Army”) in the Far East for its counteroffensive in Burma, and afterwards Malaya and Singapore. Muirhead therefore returned to the RASC on promotion to captain, joining the 14th in Burma in May 1945.
When the Japanese surrendered in August after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Muirhead was in Rangoon, but he was sent at once to Singapore and then to Perak State, Malaya, to manage a relief food supply depot during the transition from Japanese occupation. After nine months, with colonial civil government re-established, he returned to England for demobilisation in August 1946.
Roger Hedderwick Muirhead was born in Scotland in 1921. His father, John Spencer Muirhead, a distinguished lawyer, had won the DSO and MC in the First World War serving in France with a TA Royal Engineers signal unit, remaining in the TA between the wars and then putting on uniform full time again in 1939. He might have been taken prisoner during the fall of Tobruk in June 1942 had he not been transferred a few months before to command an anti-aircraft brigade in Palestine.
Muirhead was educated at the Edinburgh public school Fettes College and volunteered for the army at 18 on the outbreak of war, choosing the RASC because of his childhood love of cars. On demobilisation, he took up a deferred place at Glasgow University to read law, where his father taught Roman law, but left after two terms and emigrated to Canada, saying that he had tired of his father’s lectures. His mind was primarily practical and scientific, and in 1949 he returned to Edinburgh and entered the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College as a mature student. For five years after his return, he also served as second-in-command of 525 Company RASC in the Scottish Division (TA).
Muirhead worked subsequently in private practice in Scotland, Ireland and Gloucestershire, and as a veterinary officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF). When working in Co Galway in the 1960s, the herd of one of his client-farmers repeatedly contracted bovine tuberculosis (TB). He tracked down the cause to a milk maid who had contracted bovine TB, at a time that human cross-infection was not much recognised, if at all, publishing his findings in the Irish Veterinary Journal. He also identified the cross-infection link with badgers, and subsequently advanced his recommendations for culling.
In 1975 he went to Malta with a Maff team to deal with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and in 2001 was asked by Maff to help during the devastating British outbreak. Though by then aged 80, he worked in the field full-time for six months. On retirement, he was appointed MBE for services to agriculture.
An eccentric man, a self-confessed “petrolhead” with a love of restoring vintage cars, Muirhead settled down to village life in Gloucestershire, where he enjoyed walking his numerous dogs.
Few, if any, veteran and veterinarian can have worn the ribbon of the MBE together with those of the Africa Star, Italy Star, France and Germany Star, and Burma Star.
Roger Muirhead MBE, MRCVS, was born on April 17, 1921. He died on April 11, 2025, aged 104
