Cook | Stanley William
Biography
Son of Thomas William and May Annie Cook from Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Lance Serjeant Stanley William Cook was a member of the 1st Battalion of the Norfolks. They spent the night in the woods around Overloon on October 13, 1944. At 7.00 a.m. the next morning, two companies, B and D, left for Venray.
Lieutenant G.D.H. Dicks MC wrote a personal account of his experiences in may 1945 while convalescing from wounds received in march 1945:
Next morning, 14 october 1944, we received our orders for the attack. B company was to be the one of the two forward companies having the thankless task of first bumping and locating the enemy.
Friar (Lt. D.B. Balsom) was given the task of being the leading platoon.
Inevitably we soon came under fire from the Germans lines and Friar’s platoon suffered casualties. Everybody took to the deep ditches either side of the road and crawled forward cautiously.
I have a constitutional aversion to crwaling so very soon I began to shuffle along using my hands and feet, with my knees off the ground. Result: one bullit through my haversack. I subsided for a time but soon my constitution overcome my caution and once more I raised my body. Result: another bullit through my haversack. I did not risk a third chance.
Lieutenant “Friar” Balsom described the attack on Molenbeek between Overloon and Venray as follows:
Between the woods near Overloon and Venray the countryside streched out as flat as only Holland can be and across this bleak, wet terrain, at right angles to our line of advance, lay a number of drainage ditches called “beeks”. They were of variying widhts, but all of them were obstacles to tanks etc. About halfway between Overloon and Venray lay the biggest of them -the Molenbeek.
Dawn broke damp again and with light equipment only we took part in the battalion attack, D company to the left and we in B Company on the right. At 7.00 a.m. on that dull october morning we moved out of the woods. 11Platoon was leading on the right near the road. We advanced until enemy fire began to become effective. We located one of their positions ahead of us, made our plan and using platoon covering fire moved quickly in to take it. I remember we passed through the remains of a still smoking and smouldering haystack. We raced on until we reached the line of a beek halfway to the Molenbeek – a position we had codenamed “Cartwright”- our first objective.
Our position in that flat terrain was very exposed; 11th Platoon was forward, protected only by the banks of the ditch, and spent a very uncomfortable two days and nights.
Slit trenches soon reached down to the water level and still it rained from time to time. There was frequent shelling and mortaring and movement, especially the bringing up of food, tea or ammunition, could only take place with any degree of safety after dark.
We had had little difficulty, but unfortunately Lance Serjeant Stan Cook was killed by machine gun fire from a point far to the right of the road as he came to the “O” Group for the final assault.
It was the very day that he put on his sergeant’s stripes….
Lance Serjeant Stanley William Cook was killed on Oct. 14, 1944, and was temporarily buried on the Venrayseweg in Overloon. He was reburied at Overloon War Cemetery on May 14, 1947.
