Corporal Robin Doubleday

Robin Doubleday, son of Villroy Cournay and Rhoda Doubleday; husband of Audrey Doubleday, of Durrington, Wiltshire, enlisted into the Royal Army Service Corps and volunteered for airborne forces.

Corporal Doubleday successfully completed his parachute training at RAF Ringway, on course number 30 from 5 to 13 October 1942 and was posted to 3 Platoon, 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company, RASC, and took part in Operation Market Garden (Arnhem).

Corporal Doubleday is known to have been in a party of about 20 men commanded by Captain Kavanagh who were sent in jeeps to collect supplies which had fallen wide in a field just beyond the Oosterbeek Hoog railway station. The party were ambushed by German troops as they crossed the Dreyensebrug bridge when the captain with a few men covered the retreat of the platoon and were either killed or captured. Cpl Doubleday was later killed in action, on 24 September 1944, aged 26, in the lower Jagerskamp RASC defensive positions, by a shell from a German tank approaching from Weverstraat, and was given a field burial in a mass grave 150 yards south of the Hotel Tafelberg, at Oosterbeek. He was re-interred to Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery on 3 September 1945.

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