Henry “Harry” Chard

Trooper · #410317 · Y Patrol

What this roll records

A SECOND RECORD ON THIS ROLL WAS THIS SAME MAN, AND IT BRINGS ONE FACT WITH IT: HE WAS AN LRDG ASSOCIATION MEMBER IN JULY 1945. The roll held a separate entry reading only "Chard, N.", Trooper, with no service number, no patrol and no regiment, whose single source was the IWM Nominal Roll, LRDG Association, July 1945 (Imperial War Museum). THAT LIST IS OF MEN WHO CAME HOME, and this man did: taken at Marada on 13 January 1942, survived the sinking of the Ariosto that February, escaped in Italy in September 1943, recaptured and held in German labour camps until the end of the war. A Chard joining the Association in July 1945 is him. THE ONE THING THAT DOES NOT FIT IS THE INITIAL. He is Henry, called Harry, and O’Carroll gives him as "Tpr H.C. Chard" in the Y Patrol F30 group. The IWM list says N. A transcribed N for H is a common fault in typed nominal rolls, but it is a real discrepancy: THIS MERGE RESTS ON THE SURNAME, THE ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP AND HIS SURVIVAL, NOT ON THE INITIAL. The records were combined on 3 September 2026. Source: IWM Nominal Roll, LRDG Association, July 1945 (Imperial War Museum).

Harry Chard is retained as an identified LRDG member, but I am not entering a rank without a direct source.

Patrol Y: "Tpr H.C. Chard", Y Patrol F30 group. Brendan O'Carroll, "The Long Range Desert Group in North Africa".

North Africa — 13 Jan 1942, Marada: prisoner of war. Captured with Capt Simms; transport ship SS Ariosto sunk 15 Feb 1942 (survived, 120 lost); escaped in Italy Sep 1943; rounded up and sent to labour camps in Germany. Source: TRACKS magazine (LRDG Association), Ian Chard, 'Not all were lucky — LRDG missing in North Africa', June 2023.

Deeper background (added 2026). His unit: Y Patrol was one of the two British patrols — with the Guards ‘G’ Patrol — raised in late 1940 when the LRDG expanded beyond its original New Zealand personnel, and was drawn from the Yeomanry regiments of the 1st Cavalry Division then in Palestine. Chard’s service number, 410317, is a British Army / Royal Armoured Corps number, consistent with a yeomanry cavalryman rather than a New Zealander. (National Army Museum, ‘History of the Long Range Desert Group’: https://www.nam.ac.uk/transcript-history-lrdg)

His capture at Marada on 13 January 1942 falls in the confused winter 1941–42 desert fighting — after Operation Crusader had driven the Axis back to the El Agheila–Marada line, and only days before Rommel’s counter-offensive of 21 January 1942 — when LRDG patrols were still watching that inland flank.

The prison ship. The Italian steamer Ariosto (4,116 tons), carrying Allied prisoners from Libya toward Italy, was torpedoed off Cape Africa, Tunisia, in the early hours of 15 February 1942 by the British submarine HMS P38 (Lt R. J. Hemingway). Of roughly 294 prisoners aboard, about 138 died and some 156 survived; Chard was among the survivors. (The HMS P38 entry on Wikipedia states ‘138 Allied prisoners of war aboard were lost’ — that 138 is the number who died, not the total carried.) Source: ‘The tragedy of the POWs killed at sea’, The Crusader Project: https://rommelsriposte.com/2010/05/22/the-tragedy-of-the-pows-killed-at-sea/

Afterwards. As a prisoner in Italy, Chard was one of the many Allied POWs who broke out following the Italian Armistice of September 1943; he was rounded up and moved on to labour camps in Germany for the rest of the war, consistent with the account recorded in TRACKS.

Note on sources. No dedicated online biography, newspaper cutting or additional photograph of this man has so far been found; he is documented within the LRDG research community — TRACKS magazine (LRDG Association), Ian Chard’s roll, and Brendan O’Carroll, ‘The Long Range Desert Group in North Africa’.

See him in the full roll →

Where this comes from

• AKA added from the LRDG Preservation Society’s Troopers roll (missing information).

In collaboration withThe Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) Preservation SocietyTo add information about this man, or note a correction, please post in the Society’s Facebook Group →

This page is part of the Long Range Desert Group roll of members at lrdgarchive.org. If you hold rights to anything on it and would like it credited differently, or taken down, please see Sources and Copyright. It will be dealt with promptly.

Not By Strength But By Guile