No not the chocholate bars, or even the Berlin club featured in Cabaret, but Lt. Col. Terence Kitkat CBE DSO MC. He was born on the 16th of July, 1908, the son of a Stepford vicar. I decided to write about him today because it’s a very windy and wet day and we came across a blue plaque to him in Dartmouth.
He joined the Royal Navy and passed out of the Britannia Royal Naval College 15th out of 45 in 1926. He served on the battleship Marlborough, the battle cruisers Hood and Tiger before transfering to submarines. He was a keen hunter and after watching a display of army horsemanship at Wembley, he decided to transfer to the Royal Artillery in 1931. He commanded an artillary battery in the Western Desert in 1941. When Rommel broke through the allied lines, he was forced to withdraw, and leapfrogged his guns along the coast, keeping up covering fire and inflicting significant casualties on the Germans trying to outflank him. He kept all of his guns and used all his ammunition. The successful withdrawal and gallantry shown was rewarded with the Military Cross, one rung below the Victoria Cross, as the often say on the Antiques Roadshow.
At the end of 1942 he transferred to the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He was parachuted into Macedonia where he worked with the partisans. He was then transferred to the Far East and was parachuted into Japanese occupied Malaya. He fought there until the end of the war. His service there earned him the DSO.
He was seconded to the US Special Forces during the Korean War, but by 1954 was commanding a training establishment in covert operations near Gosport. He was appointed CBE in 1965 for his work with the British High Commission in Singapore.
A postman told us about Kitkat. He knew him well and said that he was very well liked in Dartmouth. Apparently he had a prosthetic ear because of skin cancer on one ear. He couldn’t resist taking his ear off when he met someone new, holding it out towards them and saying “speak up please, I’m a little deaf.”