Captain Francis A N Elliston

Captain Francis Albert Neville Elliston was the son of Sir George Sampson Elliston, Kt, MC, MA, DL, JP, and of Lady Elliston (nee Causton); and husband of Mary Muir Elliston, of Mill Hill, Middlesex. He was granted an emergency commission on 10 February 1940 after completing training at the 168th Officer Cadet Training Unit.

Records indicate he initially served as a 2nd Lt with the East Lancashire Regiment and was later promoted to War Substantive Lt on 1st June 1943.

Captain Elliston volunteered for airborne forces and transferred to the 13th (Lancashire) Parachute Battalion which had largely been formed from the 2nd/4th Battalion The South Lancashire Regiment in May 1943 and belonged to the 5th Parachute Brigade of the 6th Airborne Division.

He subsequently attended Parachute Training Course 72 which ran at RAF Ringway from 12 to 23 July 1943. The course cadre comprised of 335 trainees from the 13th and 8th Parachute Battalions who between them completed 2,507 descents on the course, 308 of these were night drops from the balloon. The instructors noted on the course report that Captain Elliston was a “fine type of officer and a good parachutist.”

Just after midnight on 5/6 June 1944 the 13th Battalion dropped from Dakota and Albermarle aircraft onto DZ N, North of Ranville near Caen. He was killed in fighting shortly after, by a gunshot wound to the chest, in Ranville at around 11.30 hours on 8 June.

Captain Elliston died aged 37 years and is now buried at Ranville War Cemetery, France.

Cemetery photograph reproduced by kind permission of CWGC.