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- Obituary from The Times, Thursday, 26 April 2001: Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Delaval Cotter, Bt. Hussar officer who led a tank squadron on to the beaches on D-Day and later fought some tough battles in the Normandy hinterland.
The 13th/18th Royal Hussars, which Sir Delaval Cotter went on to command in the 1950s, will long be remembered for getting the first battle tanks ashore on "Queen Red" and "Queen White" beaches on D-Day. These were the ingenious duplex-drive "swimming tanks" with floatation screens invented by the Hungarian-born engineer Nicholas Straussler. The War Office bought the idea from Straussler but the Royal Navy was so sceptical about the tanks surviving in the open sea that 300 Sherman tanks had to be converted to duplex-drive by factories in the United States and shipped in haste to England.
The first two squadrons of the 13th/18th got 31 of their 40 tanks to positions on or just off the beach, from where they could give fire support to the assaulting infantry of the 3rd (British) Drvision, which had the task of taking Caen by the end of D-Day. Cotter, commanding the third squadron, was struggling to contain his impatience while waiting to beach his tanks direct from their landing craft. This they achieved, but the regiment became involved in intense fighting on the exit points from the beach. Caen was not captured by nightfall - indeed not for a month.
Exactly two months after D-Day, Cotter won an immediate DSO for his tenacity and leadership in command of his squadron during the battle for Mont Pinçon, south of Aunay-sur-Odon, which barred exploitation of the breakout from the bridgehead south-west of Caen. His squadron was assigned to hold the village of La Varinière on the centre line of the assault, west of Mont Pinçon, with an infantry battalion already seriously depleted by casualties.
The area had not been cleared and Cotter found the surrounding woods and orchards full of the enemy. Despite intense shelling and accurate mortar fire, Cotter cleared the village and held it against repeated attacks for the vital 24 hours it took the other two squadrons of the regiment and the supporting infantry of 129 Infantry Brigade to secure the decisive lodgement on the western sector of Mont Pinçon.
A few days later, after the advance had resumed, Cotter's tank received a direct hit from a German 88mm gun. Two of his crew members were killed but he climbed out without injury. He survived in command of his squadron to the end of the campaign in North-West Europe and left his regiment in 1945 to attend a course at the wartime college at Haifa, Palestine.
Delaval James Alfred Cotter was the sixth holder of the baronetcy (created in 1763), having inherited it from his father, Sir James Laurence Cotter, as a schoolboy. He was born in Dublin and educated at Malvern College and Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the 13th/18th Royal Hussars in 1931 and joined the still-horsed regiment in India, where he served until 1939.
The 13th/18th Hussars came home to Shorncliffe before the outbreak of war, converted for mechanised fighting and were equipped with light tanks. Cotter went with them to France to join the British Expeditionary Force in September 1939. Following the confused withdrawal after the onset of the German offensive in May 1940, he was evacuated through Dunkirk.
After the end of the war in Europe he held a staff appointment in England before rejoining his regiment as second-in-command in Cyrenaica. In 1949 he accompanied the 13th/18th Hussars to Malaya, where the communist insurrection had begun the previous year. Although the public imagined infantry battalions slogging through the jungle, the armoured cars of the cavalry regiments played a key part in keeping roads open and escorting convoys of troops and supplies throughout the Emergency.
Cotter returned to England in 1950 to take over command of the Warwickshire Yeomanry, a Territorial Army regiment. Usually only one regimental command is permitted in peacetime but in 1953 he was selected to command the 13th/18th Hussars in Germany. This proved to be the peak of his career and also allowed him to demonstrate skilful horsemanship in military competitions. Later he served on the staff of the Regular Commissions Board from 1956 until retirement from the Army in 1959.
In 1943 he married Roma, widow of Squadron Leader Kenneth MacEwen, but the marriage was dissolved in 1949. In 1952 he married Eveline, widow of Lieutenant-Colonel John Paterson. She died in 1991. He is survived by two daughters of his first marriage. His heir is his nephew, Patrick.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Delaval Cotter, Bt, DSO, commanding officer 13th/18th Hussars, 1953-1956, was born on April 29, 1911. He died on April 2, 2001, aged 89.
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Genealogy of the Bryan and Martin Families
1911 - 2001 (89 years)
