Lieutenant Ian O Meikle

Lieutenant Ian Ormiston Meikle, son of Ormiston and Phyllis Alma Meikle, of Hornchurch, Essex, served as a Gun Position Officer with B Troop, 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, Royal Artillery.

He took part in the Battle of Arnhem, during Operation Market Garden and was killed whilst defending the eastern perimeter of Oosterbeek. It is believed that he was one of the occupants of a house at the side of the laundry along with Staff Sergeants Leaver and Holloway of the Glider Pilot Regiment.

Although CWGC records indicate that Lt Meikle died on September 21 the testimony of S/Sgt Leaver suggests that he may have died on Wednesday 20 September:

'The time was early afternoon, we were up in the front bedroom with an officer from the gun battery [Lt Meikle], we were feeling a bit hungry so I volunteered to go down to the cellar at the rear of the house where there was quite a good supply of bottled fruit and vegetables. Whilst making my way with some speed down the stairs (as the front door was missing and the stairs had previously been under fire), there was a very loud explosion in the front bedroom which blew me down the last few steps. I returned through the mother of all dust storms to the front bedroom where I found the artillery officer dead [Lt. Meikle] and Eric [Holloway] badly peppered with shrapnel from an 88mm airburst shell from an SP gun, on the other side of the open space to our front (it had entered the bedroom through the window).

I called for medical assistance from the Artillery Battery, this came very quickly.

We got Eric to Kate Ter Horst’s house (near the Lower Church) which was now a Medical Aid Post. Eric died later that afternoon.'

Both Lt Meikle and S/Sgt Holloway were given field burials in the garden of the Ter Horst house and later moved to the Oosterbeek War Cemetery, Arnhem.

Lieutenant Meikle died on 20 September 1944, aged 24 years old. He is now buried at Oosterbeek War Cemetery, Arnhem.