British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

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John G.
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British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#1

Post by John G. » 21 Mar 2012, 22:27

I have a British WW2 Army Captain's tunic & Pants- XII (12th) Lancers (Pr. of Wales) dated Jan. 1, 1944 named to "P.A. DILLON", it has sewn on ribbons consisting of a (#1) War Medal 1939-45, (#2)Italy Star, (#3) Africa Star w/"8" device, and (#4) 1939-45 Star. which I believe would be appropriate (circa end of 1943, early 44!).

Does anyone have anything on CAPTAIN P.A. DILLON.....circa end of 1943/early 44. I found nothing on regular search engines...have no access to British sites, etc. Any help would be much appreciated....
Thanks,
John G.

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Steen Ammentorp
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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#2

Post by Steen Ammentorp » 22 Mar 2012, 10:43

Hi John,

I think this would be Patrick Anthony Dillion (179910), who received an emergency commission in the 12th Lancers on 22nd Mar. 1941 as 2nd Lieutenant. He became a War Substantive Lieutenant on 22nd Sep. 1942. He relinquished his emergency commission on 8th Nov. 1946 and was granted the honourary rank of Captain. So he must have held that rank.
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Steen Ammentorp
The Generals of World War Two


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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#3

Post by John G. » 22 Mar 2012, 13:03

Steen,
Thanks for the information, now I can hopefully focus in on any details....but you've been a great help! Thanks most sincerely......
John G.

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#4

Post by Steen Ammentorp » 22 Mar 2012, 14:27

Hi John,

May I ask you where you picked up his uniform? In the UK or US?
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Steen Ammentorp
The Generals of World War Two

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John G.
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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#5

Post by John G. » 23 Mar 2012, 16:29

This came from a local (New Hampshire) collector who was liquidating his collection of uniforms and headgear.....most of which was post-WW 2 and of limited interest to the average collector (but I got them fairly cheap!).....this (and a few others) being exceptions to that rule. I have no idear where "he" picked this up....Pants have matching label w/name & date, and a British "Sam Browne" Belt was "afixed" as worn...on the hanger! Just need "a hat"....

I'm really "tickled pink" to have it, however, even more so....thanks to your help!
John G.

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#6

Post by Steen Ammentorp » 23 Mar 2012, 23:56

Hi John,

I was hoping that you would mention New Hampshire :D I don't know whether this is the right man, but nevertheless intriguing.

A British citizen by the name Patrick Anthony Dillon, born 21st Aug. 1921 in Vienna Austria, immigrated to the USA 14th Apr. 1951 and took up residence at Highgate Springs, Vermont. (Source: New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957).

From the US Records Index we have a man by the name Patrick A. Dillon, born 21 Aug. 1921, with residence in 1984 at 174 Dave St, Manchester, NH, 03104-4029 and again in [1991 at 15 North St, Manchester, NH, 03104-3016].

The [] is properly because he was already dead in 1991, at least the Social Security Death Index, has a resident of New Hampshire by the name Patrick A. Dillon, born 21st Aug. 1921, as having died in July 1990.

Though I can't be sure that this is your man, I do think that it is plausible. Sadly so far I haven't been able to find an obituary on him. This site http://www.faqs.org/people-search/patrick-dillon/ gives his date of death as 1st Jul. 1990.
I hope that you might be able to say for sure whether this is your man.
Kind Regards
Steen Ammentorp
The Generals of World War Two

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#7

Post by jfcolby » 01 Feb 2015, 16:12

Good Morning,
I stumbled upon this post.. I had interaction with Patrick Dillon. He did in fact live on Dave St in Manchester and died several years ago. When I was in high school I worked in a hotel that Patrick took up residence for several months with his ailing wife while his home on Dave St. was being built. He resided in Canada prior to moving to Manchester. He drove a silver Rolls Royce which we were fascinated seeing.. The Canada/British connection may help you (if you have not solved it already).

Jim

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#8

Post by benwright » 28 Jun 2015, 18:13

If it is the Patrick Dillon who was born in Vienna, my guess is that he is the son on Cecil M Dillon and Mathilda Bornemisza, daughter of the Austrian Vice Chamberlain.

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#9

Post by Rol12 » 26 Jun 2021, 08:21

Google lured me to this page too …

Here is some more background information, by way of amplification to the
(in my view correct) "guess" posted by Benwright on 28 June 2015.

The full name of Patrick Anthony Dillon's mother, in its Hungarian form,
was Matilda Lujza Viktoria Maria Bornemisza. Her first name was sometimes
abbreviated to Ilda or Ida. In a formal context, her last name would
usually be expanded with two suffixed territorial designations, becoming
either Bornemisza von Kászon und Impérfalva (in Austro-German usage) or
Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (in the French manner preferred by the
Almanach de Gotha).

Shortly after WW1 she married Cecil Meldon Dillon (1886-1953), a wartime
lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy. Patrick Anthony Dillon was the
couple's only child. His parents' marriage later failed and his father
sued for an English divorce in 1936 -- see

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov. ... r/C8085650

The following is the text of a short report printed about the conclusion of
the case in the Daily Mirror newspaper of Tuesday 16 February 1937:
A PRINCE CITED AS CO-RESPONDENT

The Prince of Sapieha was cited as co-respondent in an undefended divorce
suit heard by the President (Sir Boyd Merriman) in the Divorce Court
yesterday.

Mr. Cecil Meldon Dillon, of Dene House, Seaham Harbour, Durham, was granted
a decree nisi on the ground of the adultery of his wife, Matilda Lujka
Viktoria Maria, with Ladislas Eustache Rochus, Prince of Sapieha.

The Prince was born in Hungary. The title is Lithuanian.

The marriage took place in Budapest in October, 1919, Mrs. Dillon being a
Hungarian.

Mr. Dillon's case was that he returned to England in November, 1933, his
wife remaining in Vienna, and that in 1934 she wrote that she had decided
not to come to England.

Mr. Dillon was granted the custody of the child, a boy.
[As an aside, it may be worth noting that this report's opening sentence,
with its implication that the co-respondent held a unique title analogous
to a British peerage, suggests that the reporter was less than familiar
with the custom in many continental European countries by which all
children would prefix their forenames with their father's title as an
honorific indicator of their social status. Sapieha was in fact the sixth
of eight sons.]

Matilda may have initiated separate proceedings under Austrian or Hungarian
law; at any rate, she is reported to have married again in Budapest on 25
Sept. 1935 (so before the English divorce petition had even been filed).

Her new husband was the co-respondent cited in the English proceedings,
alternatively named in a more Polish form as Prince Wladislaw
Sapieha-Kodenski. The pair evidently decided to leave the territories of
the new reich and its allies, and by the summer of 1940 had decided to flee
Europe too, leaving Lisbon for the U.S. on 21 August via PanAm's Boeing
Clipper seaplane service.

The couple initially settled in Pennsylvania. They became naturalized as
U.S. citizens at Pittsfield, Mass., on 17 Apr. 1947 (as noted on an
outbound passenger list dated 10 June 1955).

A collection of Matilda's wartime papers and correspondence has been
deposited at the Swem Library, William & Mary College, Williamsburg -- see
the description at

https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/rep ... urces/1010

The couple sailed to France for an extended stay in 1955.
Ladislas/Wladislaw died while abroad -- at Menton in the South of France,
on 8 March 1956, per a U.S Consular Service death report.

At present I do not know when Matilda died. The last sighting I have of
her so far is as the next of kin noted in another US consular death report,
prepared in respect of her mother's death on 19 January 1959 (both being at
that time resident in Switzerland -- at Casa Marisa, Locarno).

Patrick Anthony Dillon's father seems not to have re-married. The summary
record of his will in the English probate calendar suggests that he may
have left his property to his brothers in trust, rather than directly to
his son:
Cecil Meldon Dillon of Gray House Gray Rd. Sunderland Died 4 May
1953 Probate granted Liverpool 13 June 1953 to Malcolm Alexander Meldon
Dillon solicitor & Norman Margrave Dillon retired colonel HM army. Effects:
£34,819.
I hope that at least some of the foregoing may prove useful to other
researchers.


Rol

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#10

Post by Rol12 » 26 Jun 2021, 09:59

POSTSCRIPT

Just in case some readers do not immediately spot this via the W&M Library website, here is the link to their descriptions of the individual letters:

https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/rep ... cts/273031

The one dated 24 March 194[3?] mentions that the writer misses her son, who is serving in the British army under General Montgomery.


Rol

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Re: British Captain 12th Lancers help.....

#11

Post by Rol12 » 06 Jul 2021, 04:15

At the risk of veering rather off-topic, but as a courtesy to anyone drawn here by the search terms "Bornemisza" or "Sapieha", these are a few supplementary remarks and some URLs that may help with further reading.

BORNEMISZA

The outbreak of WW2 must have faced Patrick Dillon's mother with quite a conflict of loyalties. She was the youngest of three children, all girls. In 1906 her middle sister Margit had married Heinrich Thyssen, the second of two brothers who would become the co-inheritors of the huge German steel interests of their father August, chief competitor to the Krupp dynasty. Shortly after the wedding Heinrich was adopted as a son by his father-in-law, took up Austro-Hungarian citizenship and was made a baron -- or Freiherr -- in his new domicile, thereafter becoming known as Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza.

See Heinrich Thyssen's Wikipedia article and the sources there cited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Thyssen

Also his profile on the corporate website of the now merged Thyssen and Krupp businesses:

https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/company ... misza.html

The mother of the three Bornemisza girls was an American, the former Matilda Louise Price of Wilmington, Delaware; which of course helps to explain why she was able to facilitate the immigration to the US of the Sapiehas when she returned to her homeland with them in 1940.

The Thyssen connection may well have been a relevant factor when, towards the end of their lives, Patrick Dillon's mother and maternal grandmother moved to Locarno in southern Switzerland: it lay only a little to the north of Lugano, the place that had become the chief refuge of the Thyssen-Bornemisza clan in the 1930s, when Heinrich acquired the Villa Favorita estate on the lake shore and built the famous gallery that used to display his art collection there (until ca. 1990, when Tita Cervera, fifth and final wife of his second son and eventual heir Heini, helped persuade her husband to agree to its removal to Madrid).

SAPIEHA

The main property of the Sapieha-Kodeński branch of the Sapieha family was at Krasiczyn, near Przemyśl, Galicia -- a large province of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth located just north of the Carpathians which became annexed to the Habsburg Crown in 1772 under the terms of the first Partition of Poland.

Biography & all-lines descent of Wladislaw Sapieha's father, per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82ad ... on_Sapieha

Father's entry in the Almanach de Gotha, foot of p.251, 1876 edition:

https://archive.org/details/almanachdeg ... 3/mode/2up

Origins of broader Sapieha family, per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapieha

Any family within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth using the style "prince" or any similar higher title of nobility had normally acquired their status from the Grand Dukes of Lithuania or from some wholly external power, because the creation of such titles was not within the recognised authority of the Kings of Poland (who were monarchs by election).

Finally, it is perhaps worth noting as a curiosity that Wladislaw Sapieha's mother, whose name was Elizabeth Potulicka, appears with her family as a baby in the UK census of 1861. (Her father Count Casimir Potulicki seems to have spent a number of years in London during the middle part of the 19th c., and when he died back at his home in the Prussian part of Poland in 1880 he owned non-landed property in England worth about £100,000, per the probate calendar.)


Rol

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