LAST POST!
WW2 VETERAN SQUADRON COMMANDER
The Times UK
Photography credit: Lcpl Bellamy C
Last Post! World War 2 Veteran Squadron Commander Cecil Owen Ellison (Reveille 28 Sept 1919 – Last Post 30 Sept 2018, age 99) The Barbados Defence Force honoured World War 2 Veteran, Squadron Commander Cecil Owen Ellison’s wish to be interred in the Military Cemetery. Owen Ellison was one of the last survivors of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) lesser-known but most successful campaigns of the Second World War: the mining of the River Daube between April and October 1944. This action disrupted the supply of oil from Romania to Germany.
He flew 42 operational sorties during the war against targets across Europe. He remained in the RAF and was later involved in secret missions to parachute agents into North Korea. He was promoted to Squadron Leader in 1954 and retired in 1959. After leaving the RAF, Ellison was employed by a firm of book publishers as its salesman in the Caribbean. His duties brought him to Barbados where he eventually resided and married Jean Edgehill, a native Barbadian.
In Barbados he bought a guesthouse with 12 bedrooms called Sunset Lodge, which he ran as a business. In 1965 he sold Sunset Lodge but managed a chain of hotels for a Canadian company such as Discovery Bay, Tamarind Cove, the Colony Club and Coconut Creek. Squadron Commander Ellison was renowned for his dance moves on the local hotel circuit and was affectionately known as “commander”.
Commodore (Cdre) Errington Shurland enlisted in the Barbados Defence Force in February 1984.
Colonel Glyne Grannum joined the Barbados Defence Force (BDF) on 18 October 1985 and underwent career development training at the Canadian Forces Officer Candidate School, Chilliwack and the Combat Training Centre, Gagetown New Brunswick, Canada. He subsequently attended the Infantry Training Centre and the Signal Wing in Warminster, UK (PCBC and RSO Courses respectively), the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy; the Lester Pearson Canadian Peacekeeping Centre, the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College, Kingston, the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, Toronto, the National Defence University of the People’s Liberation Army People’s Republic of China and the Centre for Hemispheric Defence Studies, National Defence University, Washington. He also attended a Defence Resources Management programme at National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa, Canada. In addition to being a qualified infantry officer, Col Grannum is a qualified Regimental Signals Officer and a former Operations Officer and Finance Officer of the BDF.
Colonel Banfield joined the Barbados Battalion of the South Caribbean Force in 1941 having just left the Cadet Corps at Combermere School, and was granted a commission as a Second Lieutenant in 1942. He was a Platoon Commander and a Company Commander during the war and served in Barbados, Dominica (as part of the Gale Force), St Lucia and St Vincent.
Warrant Officer Class 1 Colin Marshall is a graduate of the St Michael, and was born on the 5 November 1969 and enlisted in the Barbados Defence Force on 16 August 1994. He was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal in August 1997, Corporal in 1999, Sergeant in 2007, Color Sergeant in 2014, Warrant Officer Class Two in 2017 and Warrant Officer Class One in 2020. He was Most Outstanding Student on Junior Leadership Course in 1998, the Most Outstanding Student on Junior Non Commissioned Officer Cadre in Jamaica in 2000, best at Leadership on the Search Adviser Course in Jamaica in 2007 and the Most Outstanding Student on the Warrant Officer Course in Jamaica in 2015.
