KNIGHT, Valentine William


Sub-Lieutenant, Valentine William KNIGHT
Aged 28


H.M.S. "Brontosaurus" Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve
Killed in Action on 8th June 1944

Valentine William KNIGHT was born in 1916 (Ely Q1-1916 3B:833), son of George and Augusta Marian KNIGHT (née ATCHESON).

He married Marion VERITY in Blackpool (Blackpool Q3-1940). The address in his will was Green Farm, Thurston, Suffolk.
This was the address in the 1939 register for his father George [24-3-1889] a farmer and his mother Augusta M [10-11-1879], there are two closed records.

From the school's archived copies of the Culfordian magazine we learn that Valentine was at the East Anglian School from 1927 to 1935. Reported as being a good student and an athlete, being specifically remembered as a half back at hockey., On leaving school he entered King Alfred Training College at Winchester and was later appointed to a school in Cambridge. On joining the Royal Navy he became a physical training instructor before being commissioned.


He was commissioned on 23rd August 1940.

HMS Brontosaurus was a "Stone frigate", actually Castle Toward, Dunoon, Argyll, which was the No 2 Combined Training Centre where Officers and men, from all three services, were trained to operate various major types of landing ships and craft for the amphibious operations that took place from late 1943 onwards.
On taking command of his landing craft he gave it the School motto, a motto whose significance was inscribed all over his own splendid life and character.

Valentine was one of the 12 Naval personnel killed when Landing Craft Tank 875 was returning from the first landings and was sunk off the beaches at Arromanche by German motor torpedo boats.
LCT 875, a Mark IV, was built at Stockton on Tees and commissioned on 17th April 1943. It could carry 9 Sherman or 6 Churchill tanks




Castle Toward aka HMS Brontosaurus





photo: Commonwealth War Graves Commission



Valentine Knight is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial, panel 93.column 1
and remembered on a grave monument in St Peter, Thurston, Suffolk

click here to go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for full cemetery/memorial details


BACK