Lionel Queripel

On 19 September 2007, Lionel Queripel's sword which had been held with B Coy the London Regiment was presented to the Royal Sussex Regiment Museum in Eastbourne. His surviving sister, her family and Regimental representatives were present. His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Museum.

The full citation for Queripel's Victoria Cross appeared in a supplement to The London Gazette on 1 February 1945, reading:

In February 1945 when the award of the Victoria Cross was announced Tunbridge Wells Council commissioned a poem by Herbert Hope Campbell. At the time Lionel Queripel was posted as missing, it was not until after the war that it was confirmed he was killed:

In May 1942 Queripel's battalion, along with the rest of the 44th Division, now under Major General Ivor Hughes, left England, destined for North Africa. On 27 July Queripel was promoted to the temporary rank of captain. After participating in the Battle of Alam el Halfa and the Second Battle of El Alamein (the latter where they sustained heavy casualties) the battalion was one of several to provide candidates for selection to form a new battalion of the Parachute Regiment. Originally, when the 2nd Battalion was scheduled for conversion it was known as ‘S’ Battalion. However, the War Office then decreed that a regular unit could not be transferred to the Army Air Corps and the battalion remained on strength bolstered by men of the 4th and 5th Battalions. There were 200 or so men of the 2nd Battalion who qualified and progressed to parachute training and they formed the basis of the 10th Parachute Battalion at Kabrit under Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Smyth, of the South Wales Borderers. The battalion eventually became part of Brigadier John Hackett's 4th Parachute Brigade, which in June 1943 became part of Major General George Hopkinson's 1st Airborne Division. The 4th Para Brigade was held in reserve and unused during the Allied invasion of Sicily but participated in Operation Slapstick, part of the Allied invasion of Italy, in September 1943, and fought briefly in the early stages of the Italian Campaign before returning, with the rest of the division, to England in December 1943. As in Sicily, the division was held in reserve for the D-Day landings and unused during the subsequent Normandy Campaign, before being selected to take part in Operation Market Garden.

Queripel, intent on pursuing a military career, entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in January 1939. On 22 October, just a few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Sussex Regiment. He was posted to the regiment's 2nd Battalion, a Regular Army unit then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Manley James, a Victoria Cross (VC) recipient of World War I. The battalion was serving in Northern Ireland on internal security duties before moving to England in December where it became part of the 133rd Infantry Brigade, itself one of three brigades forming Major General Edmund Osborne's 44th (Home Counties) Infantry Division. Together with the rest of his battalion, Queripel went to France in April 1940, only to return less than two months later, after the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), despite fighting bravely in the Battle of France, was forced to retreat to Dunkirk, from where they were evacuated to England. Almost two years of home defence, spent mainly in Kent, were to pass before Queripel, who on 22 April 1941 was promoted to lieutenant, and his battalion were to see further action.

Recently his home town of Tunbridge Wells (to where the family moved in 1926) added his name to the Town War Memorial but he had already been included in a unique VC Memorial in Dunorlan Park in Tunbridge Wells. 10 VC recipients had lived in Tunbridge Wells including the very first VC to be awarded to Charles Lucas, who as a mate on HMS Hecla (1839) during the Crimean War in 1854 picked a live shell with a burning fuse from the deck and threw it overboard.

Captain Lionel Ernest Queripel VC (13 July 1920 − 19 September 1944) was a British Army officer and an English recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Lionel Queripel came from a well established and highly decorated military family; his father, Colonel L. H. Queripel, was appointed CMG and awarded the DSO, having served during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and later in Mesopotamia, France and Russia during World War I. His grandfather (appointed CB) and great-grandfather were also soldiers. He was born in Winterborne Monkton, Dorset, England. He was educated at Marlborough College.