John Jordan Essex Regiment

Obituary for John Jordan

John Jordan, who has died aged 87, won an immediate Military Medal in Normandy in 1944 while serving with the Essex Regiment’s celebrated 2nd Battalion, known as ‘The Pompadours’.

Jordan’s award came following operations in the Bas Brenil Wood, part of Field Marshal Montgomery’s plan to destroy the German armies in the Falaise Gap. The Essex Regiment, having landed on D-Day near Hamel on the French coast, had fought its way inland at some cost and on August 12th 1944 was advancing in difficult bocage country. This included having to negotiate a ravine, which was slow, difficult and hazardous. In earlier attacks that day a forward patrol, outnumbered and outgunned, had been forced to withdraw by fires caused by enemy smoke bombs (nebelwerfern).

At 4pm, C Company was attacked, and in a sharp engagement the Company Commander, Capt Peter Chell, was killed in close-quarter fighting while defending his HQ. Jordan’s platoon position was also attacked, with Jordan himself engaging the enemy with a Sten gun which was shot out of his hand. Jordan took a wound in the right arm and, seeing his position being overrun, he lay down in his trench as if dead, a ruse which succeeded. He then picked himself up and followed the enemy to where two of them were engaging Allied troops with a Spandau. Armed with only a previously captured German pistol, he approached them from the rear so as to take them by surprise and killed them.

Jordan was subsequently surrounded and taken prisoner — but not before he had jettisoned the pistol which, being German, could have cost him his life had it been discovered. Minutes later the area came under fire from three British regiments firing 25-pounders and 4.2in mortars, causing many enemy casualties and enabling Jordan to escape in the confusion. He subsequently reached Battalion HQ at Courmeron with valuable information. The citation for Jordan’s MM praised his great courage and initiative under most difficult conditions.

Having recovered from his wound, Jordan rejoined the Pompadours in The Netherlands for the hard-fought final phase of the war. He went on to serve in Africa, where he was part of the Guard of Honour for the tour in 1946-47 of King George VI. In Africa he was able to indulge his love of animals — while he was serving in Rhodesia his adopted orphan cheetah was so well trained that he allowed it to sleep at the foot of his camp bed.

John Humfrey Jordan was born on August 18th 1925 at Rimpton, Somerset, and educated at Stowe. After leaving the Army in 1950 he went to live in the Dordogne, where for some years he supplemented his private income by subsistence farming. One year he lost his automatic steel Rolex watch while ploughing a field — only to rediscover it in the mud when he ploughed the same field a year later (the watch still works to this day). He later worked as a translator, salesman and draughtsman, eventually returning to Britain.

John Jordan married, in 1952, Marie-Ange Germain, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. After they divorced he married secondly, in 1977, Anne Manger; she died in 1997, and he is survived by his first wife and their four children.

John Jordan, born August 18th 1925, died October 20th 2012

Courtesy Daily Telegraph