Roll of Honour - killed in action
Title
Roll of Honour - killed in action
Description
F/O Kenneth Marriott DFC. Obituary. Second tour Pathfinder.
Date
1944-05-05
Temporal Coverage
Language
Type
Format
One newspaper cutting
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
NMadgettHR190610-14
Transcription
Kentish Times 5/5/44
ROLL OF HONOUR.
KILLED IN ACTION.
F/O Kenneth Marriott, D.F.M.
[Photograph of a man in uniform]
Flying Officer Kenneth Marriott, D.F.M., has been killed in action, and the deepest sympathy will be felt with his young wife and his parents in the loss of one of those gallant young airmen who can so ill be spared. Mr. and Mrs. Marriott live at 43, North-park, Eltham, and as a boy Kenneth went to Cannock House School. When he was 12 he stood only 4ft. 4in., and the nickname of “Little Tich” stuck to him although he grew to over 6ft, in height and weighed 12 stone. While at school he was keen and good at sports and was captain of the school’s first XI. when he was 14. later he and his friend and schoolmate, Dennis Reely, played first string at tennis for Woolwich Equitable Building Society. His passion was tennis and his post-war hope was Wimbledon.
Kenneth, who would have been 24 had he lived till March 31, joined the R.A.F. voluntarily in 1940, and while a sergeant wireless operator and air gunner he won the D.F.M. for “considerable ability under trying conditions, thus contributing materially to the safe return of his aircraft.” The caption added that he had “always shown a keen sense of responsibility, combined with great devotion to duty.”
After 29 flights over Germany he was put on as an instructor, and his desire to get back to operational flying was not met till last October, a few months after he had been commissioned, he was accepted as a Pathfinder.
He considered it great luck to be a Pathfinder, as only those 100 per cent fit and efficient were chosen for such work, and he attributed his 100 per cent fitness to his non-smoking and teetotal habits.
He made seven flights, four of them over Berlin in one week. On the seventh his was one of 79 planes which did not return.
It has been learned that he was too badly wounded to jump when others of the crew baled out, and that his friend, Squadron Leader K. G. Davis, stayed in the plane in an effort to make a safe landing. Had that million-to-one chance succeeded Kenneth might have turned to a quotation he had written when he was 20; “The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.”
ROLL OF HONOUR.
KILLED IN ACTION.
F/O Kenneth Marriott, D.F.M.
[Photograph of a man in uniform]
Flying Officer Kenneth Marriott, D.F.M., has been killed in action, and the deepest sympathy will be felt with his young wife and his parents in the loss of one of those gallant young airmen who can so ill be spared. Mr. and Mrs. Marriott live at 43, North-park, Eltham, and as a boy Kenneth went to Cannock House School. When he was 12 he stood only 4ft. 4in., and the nickname of “Little Tich” stuck to him although he grew to over 6ft, in height and weighed 12 stone. While at school he was keen and good at sports and was captain of the school’s first XI. when he was 14. later he and his friend and schoolmate, Dennis Reely, played first string at tennis for Woolwich Equitable Building Society. His passion was tennis and his post-war hope was Wimbledon.
Kenneth, who would have been 24 had he lived till March 31, joined the R.A.F. voluntarily in 1940, and while a sergeant wireless operator and air gunner he won the D.F.M. for “considerable ability under trying conditions, thus contributing materially to the safe return of his aircraft.” The caption added that he had “always shown a keen sense of responsibility, combined with great devotion to duty.”
After 29 flights over Germany he was put on as an instructor, and his desire to get back to operational flying was not met till last October, a few months after he had been commissioned, he was accepted as a Pathfinder.
He considered it great luck to be a Pathfinder, as only those 100 per cent fit and efficient were chosen for such work, and he attributed his 100 per cent fitness to his non-smoking and teetotal habits.
He made seven flights, four of them over Berlin in one week. On the seventh his was one of 79 planes which did not return.
It has been learned that he was too badly wounded to jump when others of the crew baled out, and that his friend, Squadron Leader K. G. Davis, stayed in the plane in an effort to make a safe landing. Had that million-to-one chance succeeded Kenneth might have turned to a quotation he had written when he was 20; “The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.”
Collection
Citation
“Roll of Honour - killed in action,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed July 22, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/19018.
Item Relations
This item has no relations.