D-DAY to the OLD BAILEY

D-DAY to the OLD BAILEY

His Honour D A 'Tommy' Grant

DAILY TELEGRAPH online 23/08/2001

 

Barrister who on D-Day led the team of pilots that tugged the gliders across the Channel in the operation to take Pegasus Bridge 

HIS HONOUR D A "TOMMY" GRANT, who has died aged 85, was a leading Silk and later a judge at the Old Bailey; during the Second World War, he was awarded a DSO for his part in the capture of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day.

Tommy Grant was a flight lieutenant in 1944, but despite his comparatively junior rank he was placed in charge of training glider crews for what was to be the celebrated seizure of the road crossing over the Caen canal behind the Normandy beaches. This crossing became known as Pegasus Bridge.

During the night of June 5-6, Grant led the team of pilots tugging the gliders across the Channel towards their objective. This was the sole road bridge over the river Orne and the parallel Caen canal between Caen and the coast 10 miles away. The road crossed the river and canal between Bénouville in the west and Ranville in the east.

A coup de main party of infantry and Royal Engineers was to land at 20 minutes after midnight by glider, take the bridges and secure them, ready for the seaborne invaders to make use of them. Six Horsa gliders under Grant's leadership crossed the French coast a few minutes after midnight and were released. "Everything was so quiet," one of those involved remembered, "that it seemed we were merely carrying on an exercise in England."

The nose of the first glider hit the barbed wire around the German post guarding the Bénouville bridge; two more gliders landed within 100 yards. The bridge was rushed and captured intact, though the leading platoon commander was killed. The Ranville bridge was also taken by men landed in gliders. There were later losses, but by dawn the bridges were secured and the bridgehead held.

The careful preparation and training that Grant insisted on had paid off. The experience that qualified Grant to mastermind this vital operation had been gained in North Africa and Sicily; and it had been hard won. On July 9-10 1943, taking part in Operations Ladbrook and Fustian, Grant tugged gliders in none too successful airborne operations to support the invasion of Sicily.

Brigadier George Chatterton, commander of the Glider Pilot Regiment, paid tribute to his courage: "At the coast, his wing, which had been hit by flak, caught fire, but still he flew on, and delivered the glider to the right spot and at the right height before turning back to base 400 miles away." Grant had been one of the few tug pilots to release their gliders.

Several gliders were released far too soon; they fell into the sea, drowning the troops aboard. Grant's subsequent, masterly report was highly critical of tug pilot training. In August 1943 he returned to Farnborough to help implement his recommendations for future towed glider airborne operations. It was at Brigadier Chatterton's special request that Grant was asked to train D-Day glider crews.

Derek Aldwin Grant was born on January 22 1915 in Burma, where his father was serving in the Indian Civil Service. He was always known as Tommy, his parents having intended to christen him Thomas as his third name until on the way to the church a prospective godfather suggested that would burden him with too many names.

From Winchester, Tommy Grant went up to Oriel College, Oxford, where he read Jurisprudence. A keen tennis player, he played in Junior Wimbledon in 1932. He was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1938 and entered chambers in the Temple, practising in criminal law on the Western Circuit.

He joined the RAF in 1940, and was interviewed for possible pilot training. "Well, Grant," said the interviewer, "so you want to bomb Germany?" Convinced that the bombing of civilian targets was wrong, Grant said, "No, Sir." Nevertheless he was commissioned as a pilot the next year. He served as a flying instructor before making his mark as a glider tug pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment's airborne experimental department at Farnborough.

In June 1943, Grant was involved with Operation Beggar, a first attempt at long-range glider ferrying. Beggar's ambitious objective was to ferry a force of Horsa heavy gliders to Tunisia tugged by Halifax bombers via Morocco. On the way, a Halifax and glider were shot down by two Focke Wulf Condors returning from an attack on an Allied convoy off Portugal. After four further glider and two Halifax losses, 19 Horsa gliders made it to Kairouan in Tunisia.

At the end of the war, from June 1945, Grant served in the Judge Advocate General's department until he was released the next year. As his old set of chambers had been disbanded during the war, he entered Walter Monckton's chambers. In 1951, this set split three ways, and Grant and three others, led by Brian McKenna, broke away to form a set at 3 Paper Buildings.

Grant became head of chambers in 1961 when McKenna went on to the High Court bench. In the early days, the bulk of their work was before the Privy Council. Grant's relaxed yet incisive advocacy won several notable victories in Crown appeals from India. His practice changed, however, following developments in competition law.

Since the 1930s the law had favoured cartels, but by the 1950s opinion was shifting in favour of greater competition, leading to a stream of laws intended to ban price-fixing agreements. Grant's chambers recognised the new Restrictive Practices Court as a chance to establish an area of expertise in an expanding and lucrative area. The way that the legislation was drafted, and the way in which judges chose to interpret it, meant that most decisions went against anti-competitive practices.

A notable exception, however, was the Net Book Agreement case in 1963, for which Grant, who had taken Silk a year earlier, was one of the leading counsel for the publishers. The resulting win for the publishers, enabling them to set the prices for books, established the basis on which the retail trade in books was conducted for the next three decades.

Grant was probably the first barrister to become fully involved in the preparation of cases before the Monopolies Commission - work that involved lengthy discussions with his industrialist clients. He insisted that the directors of the companies involved appear in person rather than send subordinates. He was meticulous in analysing facts and rigorous in testing propositions. His advocacy, by contrast, was relaxed and charming.

Even with a disingenuous witness, he would gently expose the truth rather than bludgeon it out of him. Impressed by his ability, the Recorder of London, Sir Carl Aarvold, recommended him for the bench. (Grant already had some judicial experience as Recorder of Salisbury and of Portsmouth.)

In 1969, Grant became one of the last Additional Judges to be appointed by the City of London to the Old Bailey. (With increasing pressure of work, these judges, "additional" to the Common Serjeant and the Recorder of London, were replaced under the Courts Act of 1971 by circuit judges assigned to the Old Bailey by the Lord Chancellor's Department.)

Grant's ability to analyse complicated matters meant that he was given a series of long and difficult fraud cases, but he discharged his duty with application and charm. He was known as "Smiler" Grant for the grin that sometimes passed over his face on hearing evidence.

Grant had bought a farm in West Sussex in the 1950s, and it was there that he retired in 1984. He was a fine dairy farmer, achieving a tight calving pattern. He was a friendly and considerate employer. He married, in 1954, Phoebe Wavell-Paxton; they had a son and three daughters.