Tasburgh Quarterly and Church News - Autumn 2013
Tasburgh Memories As we approach September it is worth looking at the only name on the memorial from the Second World War: Michael John Carnac Fisher. 2nd Lieutenant Fisher was serving with the 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment) in 1940. His battalion was tasked with holding the northern edge of the Dunkirk perimeter as it steadily shrank under the pressure from the German attack. On the 31st of May, during the German assault which at times completely surrounded the battalion, he was killed. After a strong counterattack by the remains of the 4th division and a successful RAF and naval aviation attack on the Germans the division pulled back and was picked up from the beach. On the 4th of June 1940 Operation Dynamo ended with the rescue of 366,131 allied troops, but the three week Flanders campaign had cost 68,111 British officers and men killed or prisoner of which 2nd Lieutenant Fisher was one. M J C Fisher was born in 1920 the son of William Lawrence Thompson Fisher and Eleanor Mary, nee Pemberton. He was christened in St Peters Church Euston Square, the same church where, in 1917, his parents were married. His father’s home address on the marriage certificate is Burgh House, Fleggburgh. At the time of his marriage William Fisher was a captain in the Royal Fusiliers. His battalion had taken part in the battle of Vimy Ridge in the April and was to take part in the battle of Messines in June, which probably explains the London Marriage under special licence in May. The family lived at Tasburgh House in 1939 but had left by the end of the war. His father died in 1968 at Hatfield in Herts and his mother, probably, in 1978 in Berlin. The 1939 Register of Electors, those adults over 21 who had rights to vote in national and local government elections, show only 3 men from the village away to the military. M J C Fisher is not one of the three as he was not old enough to vote. The three were : Edwin John Albert Lammas of Commerce House Denis William Heley of Fir Cottage Logan Dahne Gates of the Rectory. The register for the Victory Election of 1945 is in two parts. The first is general register of voters who are in the village. This register shows the Fishers had moved away. The second known as the forces register shows a 36