WWII Dunkirk and Market Garden veteran Ray Whitwell died on Wednesday 20 November; he was 105.
During WWII, war took Ray Whitwell from Dunkirk to North Africa and Italy before returning to England to prepare for Operation Market Garden in September 1944.
In 2021, Ray shared his story with the Taxi Charity:
Called up aged 20, Ray went to Ramsgate on the Kent coast only to discover that his first night of army life meant sleeping on the floor, with a couple of blankets and his boots for a pillow.
On 1 January 1940, he sailed to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, where he drove a three-ton Bedford van to deliver petrol (in tins which leaked), to those who needed it.
Later that year between 26 May and 4 June, the evacuation from Dunkirk took place, and Ray headed to Dunkirk in his truck. Leaving his vehicle just outside the town, he headed to the beach to find thousands of British troops waiting to evacuate. Deciding that this wasn’t the place he wanted to be, he commandeered an Austin and drove to Lille. Once there, he exchanged the petrol he was carrying for a train ride to Le Havre and from there jumped on board a Dutch fishing vessel heading for Southampton.
Ray’s part in WWII then took him to North Africa, the invasion of Sicily and time in Italy before returning to the UK to prepare for Operation Market Garden.
Ray flew into the Netherlands in a glider carrying a jeep and a trailer packed with ammunition and hand grenades. When they landed, their orders were to defend the landing zone from the Germans who were on two sides. Ray often said: "We went nine days without food during Operation Market Garden and then snipers shot holes in the bucket we were collecting water in." One of the lucky ones, he evaded capture as he escaped back over the Rhine to British lines.
The Taxi Charity had the immense pleasure of taking Ray to the Netherlands several times. On one of those trips, when Ray was 103, the Gelderse Gliding Club took him up in a glider to see the area where he landed all those years before. Ray said at the time: "It was wonderful, I could see for miles. I loved every minute and was very glad that when we came down it was still 2022 and not 1944!"
London cab driver and Taxi Charity volunteer, Sebastian Philp, was Ray’s regular driver when he joined the charity for trips. Seb would drive to Malton in North Yorkshire to pick Ray up and they became great friends. Seb said: "What an honour it was to have Ray Whitwell as a friend. He had a cheeky personality, was very friendly, witty, funny and shared amazing stories of what he had witnessed during his life. I will really miss him. What a great man. A true hero!"
Ray was a proud Yorkshireman who people knew as ‘Smiler’. His daughter, Jill, said: "He was special to me but they all were. We need to remember that it was ordinary people like him who did the extraordinary for people of this country at that time. I would describe him as humble and kind; a gentleman in the true sense. He was proud to be a veteran. He felt especially loved and appreciated by the people of Arnhem and the Netherlands. And, when you met him, he had that twinkle in his eye and a lovely smile. He was just a nice man and of course a hero!”
