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Company Sergeant Major Herbert Cousins
Unit : Headquarters, 9th Field Company
Army No. : 1871204
The following biography has been compiled by Helen Potts, granddaughter of CSM Cousins.
Herbert Cousins was born in Sheffield on 18 March 1911 and grew up in a large working family. The 1921 census shows him living in Walkley, with his parents, George Henry Cousins and Mary Cousins, and six siblings: Alfred, Gladys, Lilian, Eveline, Edna, and George E. Cousins. The household was closely tied to Sheffield's industrial world. His father was employed as an Engineering Assistant with Messrs Hadfields Ltd Steel Makers, though at the time of the census he was out of work. Whether or not this directly influenced Herbert's later path, he grew up in a family already familiar with both skilled work and economic insecurity.
Herbert worked as a painter and decorator before enlisting in the Royal Engineers at Bedford on 5 December 1934, aged 23. Entering the Army as a Sapper, he brought with him a civilian trade that was soon absorbed into the Corps' own technical structure. His service record shows him being remustered and tested as a Painter and Decorator, progressing through the Army's graded trade system until he reached a high standard within his military trade.
His early service took him first to Egypt, from February 1935 to February 1936, and then to Palestine from September 1936 to September 1939. This placed him in the Middle East during the years of the Arab Revolt, for which he was awarded the General Service Medal with clasp Palestine. On 22 April 1939, he married Edith at Elham, Kent.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Herbert served with the British Expeditionary Force in France, embarking from Southampton on 30 September 1939 and remaining with the BEF until the evacuation from Dunkirk on 1 June 1940. He then spent the long home-service years of 1940 to 1943 with the Company as it rebuilt after Dunkirk, undertook anti-invasion work in Britain, and converted to airborne status.
In April 1943 he moved overseas with the Company to North Africa as a Sergeant. During this period he was promoted to Company Sergeant Major, a rank he had reached by 13 June 1943. He is visible as Company Sergeant Major Cousins in the Imperial War Museum photograph of the Company marching off after Church Parade on 4 July 1943 (see above). He was serving as Company Sergeant Major at the time of the Company's first major airborne action in Sicily in July 1943, and later served with it in Italy in the Taranto and Salerno areas during the autumn of 1943 before the Company's return to Britain.
In 1944 Herbert went with the Company to Arnhem during Operation Market Garden. The Company's order of battle for Operation Market lists him in Company Headquarters as WO II Cousins, Company Sergeant Major. He is also identified in a surviving photograph of HQ Platoon standing in front of glider chalk 388 before take-off on 17 September 1944 in Patrick Pronk's book, The Shiny 9th. During the battle itself, his own service record later records him as wounded in the left foot on 26 September 1944, but remaining on duty. Archive material held by ParaData / the Airborne Assault Museum confirms that he was a member of the HQ Section during Market Garden and was one of the men who successfully escaped capture by crossing the Rhine after the failure at Arnhem.
After Arnhem he continued to serve in North-West Europe and then in the post-war Army. His record shows service in the Middle East and Greece, including Salonika, and later in the British Army of the Rhine. He re-engaged to complete 22 years' service and in January 1953 was awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, his conduct being officially recorded as Exemplary. A surviving testimonial from the later part of his career describes him as "an outstanding Instructor", adding that although he was an experienced specialist in bridging, he could "solve and teach any field engineering problem up to B1 standard."
In the final stage of his service, Herbert Cousins was posted to the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment (MEXE) at Christchurch, then Hampshire (now Dorset), the Royal Engineers' research and development centre for bridging, mine warfare, and other engineering equipment. It was the kind of establishment in which the legacy of wartime innovations such as the Bailey Bridge was carried forward, and a posting there suggests that Herbert's practical experience and instructional ability were highly valued. He died suddenly at home on 8 May 1958, aged 47, from coronary thrombosis.
Herbert served his King and Country from 1934 to 1958, a span that carried him through the later years of the British Empire, through the horror of the Second World War, and into the uneasy first years of the Cold War, the great upheavals of the twentieth century. In his Report of Activities, 9 Field Company RE, Operation "Market", signed on 30 September 1944, Major J.C. Winchester recorded that on 22 September the Company was being commanded by CSM Cousins, as all the officers were wounded or missing except Captain Binyon, a striking measure of the responsibility he carried in the battle's darkest days. The surviving record shows him as a technically skilled, disciplined and dependable soldier, deeply committed to the Company in which he served. One comrade later remembered him simply as a "benevolent CSM”=", a phrase that seems to capture well the combination of authority and humanity by which he was known.