Sgt. ‘Pip’ Orange

It has been somewhat mad since Christmas, one would actually say, overwhelming. I’ve literally not had a spare moment and it’s all been piling up around me. Everyone seems to forget that when you have a day job and a family too and that you do all of this stuff in your spare time!

However, there has been great progress on the book on 142 RAC and this is drawing into its final stages before publication (with a cover reveal coming soon), but in a moment of relative calm yesterday evening, having collected the latest ‘Friends of The Suffolk Regiment’ magazine from the printers, I had an hour to devote to a little bit of research and so I picked up again on the story of Sergeant Alfred Orange of the Suffolk Yeomanry who was badly wounded in Normandy.

Alfred ‘Pip’ Orange was a pre-war member of 220 Battery, who was wounded in Normandy whilst serving with 219 Battery. His wounds were so serious that it resulted in the loss of his left arm, which was somewhat debilitating, but nether the less, he was a notable character in his local village of Feltwell in Norfolk, taking a great interest in its historical past where in 1966, he founded the ‘Feltwell Historical and Archeological Association’ (FHAA).

He later wrote ‘The Story of Feltwell’ in 1970; a small volume on the history of the village back to ancient times yet despite his disability, he was a keen active amateur archaeologist finding numerous Neolithic flint and Roman pottery fragments in his own front garden.

His story came to light when I discovered a letter he had written to Colonel Edmund Bacon in the 1980s describing the circumstances of a comrades death at Rauray in Normandy. He was quite detailed in his reply and I only wish there was more of this sort of thing in the Suffolk Yeomanry archives, but his story has gone into the draft all will be revealed in the book in due course (when it gets printed!!!)

Meanwhile, here is a photograph of Pip taken I believe, in Yorkshire in 1943 when the Regiment were part of 79th Division.