Capt. Geoffrey Rippon Rees-Jones

Geoff Rees-Jones seen here in his Welsh International Rugby Shirt in 1935 when he scored two tries against the All Blacks giving Wales a famous victory 13 - 12.

Geoff Rees-Jones joined No.5 Commando in July 1940 at its inception. The War Office was concerned by the lack of mountain troops and asked that soldiers with a knowledge of climbing come forward. Rees-Jones volunteered and was stationed at the Clachaig Hotel in Glencoe where he and his comrades ran a course for several months and proved to the War Office that ordinary soldiers could be turned into mountaineers. Comrades remember that he had a fine tenor voice and an inexhaustible repertoire of rugby songs..
In May 1942, Rees-Jones accompanied 5 Commando, part of 29 Infantry Brigade, in the invasion of Madagascar in an operation against the Vichy French. His objective was a large battery which covered the beach, for its capture would enable the main force to take the port of Diego Suarez from the rear.
Rees-Jones led the first two landing craft and, at 2am, was the first of his unit ashore. "We caught the French fast asleep," he said afterwards. "There was a proper scrap, but we took the battery without a casualty."
In 1943, CMSWTC moved to North Wales and, under the command of Rees-Jones, the Lovat Scouts were trained as a mountaineering battalion. The War Office, however, decided that the commandos needed more shore work and that the training centre should become a cliff assault school.
Rees-Jones moved the centre to St Ives, Cornwall, to train in cliff assaults in preparation for D-Day and pioneered the concept of using small boats (dories) to land commandos on otherwise inaccessible cliffs.
The accident rate was high. Early in 1944, Rees-Jones and Capt Noel Odell (remembered for his part in the ill-fated British Everest Expedition of 1924) were doing a coastal reconnaissance when they were stopped by a policeman who had taken them for spies.
The night before D-Day, Rees-Jones escorted a raiding party up a Normandy cliff to capture a shore battery.

After attending Staff College, he was posted to Germany as brigade major of 4 Commando Brigade and was mentioned in dispatches.