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Captain Andrew Angus MC
Late Grenadier Guards
by Major P A J Wright OBE
formerly Grenadier Guards
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 Andrew Angus, who died on 3rd November 2013, aged 92, was born at Birkenhead on 4th October 1921. He was educated at the Dragon School and Shrewsbury. At the outbreak of war, and following Sandhurst, he joined the Grenadier Guards and was posted to the Training Battalion at Windsor, responsible at that time for the immediate protection of the Royal Family in the event of an airborne assault on England. In 1943 he accompanied the 3rd Battalion by ship to Algiers and fought in the North Africa Campaign before embarking for Naples and taking part in the long slog northwards up the spine of Italy.
In the attack on Perugia on 18th June 1944, as Signals Officer, he was leading a party of signallers up Monte Corno in order to establish communications with the forward companies. Although they were following in the tracks of a Sherman tank, the jeep leading the group set off two ‘S’ mines, and the Intelligence Officer and a wireless operator were badly wounded. While Angus was looking after the wounded men, two dispatch riders rode up the track and set off three more mines. One of the riders was killed instantly, the other and the driver of the jeep were severely wounded. Angus was also wounded, in three places, but despite this, he managed to lift the more severely wounded man into the jeep and drive it himself to the Regimental Aid Post. He then insisted on going back with stretcher bearers to bring out the other wounded man, maintaining he was the only one who knew where the mines were. It was only when the rescue was complete that, weakened by loss of blood, he allowed his own wound to be dressed. He was awarded an Immediate MC.
After he was evacuated to hospital in Rome, his parents received a telegram that he had been placed on the ‘danger list’. Regrettably the two soldiers he had rescued died of their wounds. Angus, however recovered and commanded a detachment which guarded the King during his visit to Field Marshal Alexander’s advance HQ on Lake Bolsena. He rejoined his battalion in Florence and, in April 1945, took part in the forced crossing of the River Po. During a spell of leave, he and another officer drove to Lake Como. In Milan they came across the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, hanging down from the roof of a petrol station. Angus was twice mentioned in despatches before the battalion finished the war in Austria.
In 1946 he was demobilised and joined the Jardine Matheson head office in Hong Kong. In 1963 he returned to England and subsequently opened a Liverpool office for the Ionian Bank. He was Vice President of the Liverpool Branch of the Grenadier Guards Association. In 1952 he married Cecily Ayris. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their two sons and three daughters.
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