Kenneth Oswald Parsons was born in June 1923 in Mitcham, Surrey.  His mother Edith was a housewife and his father Oswald worked for Midland Bank and they raised Kenneth and his sister Dorothy in Bromley, Kent.  Aged seventeen he won an Exhibition to Oxford and started at Keble College in April 1941 studying history.

At Oxford, he joined the Officer Training Corps and when his call up came in June 1942, he opted for the Royal Armoured Corps. Soon realising that he was too tall to fit in a British tank, he volunteered for the newly formed Parachute Regiment (T&E ledger 15/6). Kenneth conducted his parachute jump instruction at RAF Ringway on Course 93. This course ran between 29 November and 13 December 1943. The course report notes that "L/C Parsons hit aperture of aircraft on 4th aircraft" and received a Class B injury of "Swollen nose and black eye".

In the early morning of 6 June, 1944, as part of the Int. Section HQ Coy, 8th Parachute Battalion, he was on board one of 27 Dakota aircraft heading for drop zones in Normandy, close to Sword Beach.  Kenneth was number 12 in the stick to jump from his plane. He landed safely in a cornfield, made his way to the rendezvous point and stayed with the battalion in Normandy in the Bois De Bavent, close to Caen, for three months including his 21^st birthday.  The battalion’s role was to secure a buffer zone to prevent German counter attacks and stop reinforcements coming from the east.  He was in the Intelligence Section and wrote a war diary covering the whole period.

After a brief excursion to the Ardennes at the tail end of the Battle of the Bulge, Kenneth and the 8^th Battalion were part of the crossing of the Rhine, parachuting on to the German occupied east bank at Wesel, this time in daylight, on 24 March, 1945. This time he landed in small clearing in the forest close to a German half-track vehicle that had been abandoned with its engine running. Please see below a summary of Kenneth's personal Normandy Diary. You can read a full transcription of this diary, using the links at the bottom of theis biography. 

Kenneth returned to Oxford after being released to The Army Reserves in 1945 to finish his degree.  After graduation, he went on to University College London to do a Diploma in librarianship. He got his first civilian job in 1948 and took a job at the University of Khartoum in the Sudan in 1950, fearful of being drafted again in the Korean War.  He felt he had already used up his quota of good fortune.

He married his wife Barbara in May 1954. The marriage would last nearly 64 years. They lived for ten blissful years in Rome where Kenneth worked for the UN as a librarian. His daughter Julia was born in 1958 followed by his son Edward 3 years later. 

The family settled in Bromley and Kenneth took up a post as International Librarian at the London School of Economics (LSE) in London.  As he had passed the Bar, he was later appointed Law Librarian.

In the early 1980’s, Kenneth took early retirement, and they moved to a village on the edge of Dartmoor. Deteriorating health and a desire to be closer to family brought them to Sussex in 2009. After a fall Kenneth died on 21^st April 2018.

Written by Kenneth’s son Edward Parsons. 

Recommended further reading - "Band of Scholars" by Edward Parsons