Major-General Tony Younger, who has died aged 91, was wounded on D-Day while commanding an elite squadron of sappers, the first armoured unit to land on its beach at Normandy.
In 1943 Younger took command of 26 Assault Squadron (26 AS), a unit equipped with bridge-laying and other specialist tanks, and was told that it would lead their 7th Brigade ashore on D-Day. Off the coast of Normandy, many of the men were so exhausted by seasickness that it took the incoming fire from the German defenders to get them into their tanks.
The number of anti-tank obstacles on the beach came as an unpleasant surprise. Younger's vehicle carried a mine-clearing plough, but as he was steering a course through them a mortar shell hit his turret. He was knocked to the floor, his wireless was destroyed and he was deafened in one ear. Despite being in severe pain and under fire, he got out and directed his squadron's operations on foot, pushing ahead of infantry still pinned down by machine-gun and mortar fire. He walked into Courseulles, where the bridges were mined and prepared for demolition. He cut the electric leads, dumped the explosive charges in the water and thereby provided an important link between two forward battalions. He was awarded a DSO.
Allan Elton Younger was born at Clifton on May 4 1919. He was educated at Gresham's and, after entering the Army in 1937, went to the RMA Woolwich. Younger was commissioned and passed into Cambridge, but the outbreak of war intervened and he joined a new sapper company. After going to France with 61 Company RE and being evacuated from Dunkirk, he moved to Octu at Aldershot and was subsequently posted to the Chemical Defence Experimental Station at Porton Down.
He took a convoy to Gruinard Bay, Wester Ross, to carry out experiments with anthrax to establish what measures would be needed if it was used against Britain in warfare. Sheep were tethered downwind of canisters which were full of anthrax spores. The canisters were exploded and, when the sheep died, Younger's job was to blow up part of the local cliff and bury their carcases. Never the less Gruinard remained quarantined for 48 more years.
In November 1944, after recovering from his injury, he took command of 77 Assault Squadron in what was probably the most sophisticated sapper operation of the war, the forced crossing of the Rhine.
Younger's amphibious squadron played a vital part in ferrying the leading commandos across. An important radio message, code-word "Splash", confirming that they were in the river, was jammed by the Germans. He was worried that the artillery barrage would not be lifted from the further bank and that there would be heavy casualties. An alert gunner officer, however, realised that something had gone wrong and gave the order just in time.
After the war Younger attended Staff College. A spell in Malaya at the beginning of the Emergency was followed by a return to England and a two-year course at Christ's College, Cambridge, reading Mechanical Science.
In 1950 he embarked for Korea, where he and three friends all had a vivid presentiment of death. During the conflict the three were killed. Younger credited his life to a sudden transfer to the US Army Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
After instructing at Sandhurst he commanded 36 Corps Engineer Regiment in Kenya. He was Chief of Staff, HQ Allied Forces Northern Europe from 1970 to 1972 before instructing at the Royal College of Defence Studies. From 1974 to 1979, he was Colonel Commandant Royal Engineers.
Younger was Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies from 1976 to 1978. He was appointed OBE in 1962.
In 2004 he published Blowing Our Bridges, an account of his wartime experiences.
Although a churchgoer all his life, Younger professed to be a non-believer because of all the suffering that he had seen. Two years before his death, however, he came to faith and was baptised in his swimming pool.
Tony Younger died on July 5. He married, in 1941, Diana Lanyon, who survives him with their three daughters.
Major-General Tony Younger DSO
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