Major Jeffrey Noble Obituary
After the sad news that Jeffrey Noble died on 4th June 2020, aged 96, John O’Reilly has written his obituary. With a bit of help from Will Stark we have made it available for download here in the 151/156 site.
Jeff Noble joined the 156 in Tunisia in 1943. He was a 19-year-old 2nd Lieutenant tasked with reconstituting the Medium Machine Gun Platoon. He served with the unit through the 156 Battalions involvement in Italy and finally at Arnhem in 1944. To read the full obituary click the button below. You can also view the article from the telegraph here.
If any members wish to leave comments, memories or stories about Jeff then email will@156para.co.uk and we will include them below.
Members comments
Dear Rosie and John
Like you we were all very sad to hear of Jeffrey’s passing. The Rogers family has a particular reason to be thankful for him and I think the story is worth relating.
Through a curious set of circumstances we met him and his wife a couple of years ago. Jeffery went to live in a retirement village in Liphook, Hampshire and, being a very sociable and articulate man, he soon made friends with other residents. One of his neighbours was interested in his memories of Arnhem and relayed Jeffrey’s story to his daughter and her partner. The partner is Olly’s brother-in-law and he immediately told us about the connection and suggested a meeting.
At first we were sceptical. Jeffrey was 10 years younger than my father and perhaps there was another Captain Rogers or he was confused. But it was intriguing and we wanted to find out more.
Olly and I visited him and were invited to lunch with him and his wife in the communal dining room. Any doubts about his memory were soon dispelled as he told us all about how they met and interesting facts about the father I never knew. We then went to their flat and he and his wife produced some information for us to look at. Perhaps, because he was so young at the time, relationships and incidents were very clear. Over coffee and liqueurs we spent a couple of hours listening to his story.
We parted with the promise that we would all meet up at Melton Mowbray in September. I wrote to him a couple of times but sadly we never met again. We will never forget the impact of that visit and the small pieces of the jigsaw we were able to add to the picture of my father.
Terry and all the Rogers family