Maurice Turnbull Killed by Sniper at Montchamp — August 1944

Born in Cardiff in 1906 to a wealthy ship-owning family, Turnbull captained the Cambridge XI, made his Test debut in 1930 and played nine Tests over six years. He took on the Glamorgan captaincy in 1930 at the age of 24, and by 1939 had transformed a perennially loss-making county into a competitive Championship side that finished a then-best fourth in 1937. He was joint-secretary of the MCC's wartime selection committee.

Commissioned into the Welsh Guards in 1939, Turnbull rose to Major. His battalion landed in Normandy in late June 1944 and joined the Allied push south from the Caen sector. By the first week of August the Guards Armoured Division was engaged in fierce hedgerow fighting in the Suisse Normande, where the bocage stripped infantry of their armoured cover.

Turnbull's Welsh Guards company had pushed forward of its supporting tanks during a Panzer counter-attack and was cut off in the bocage countryside south of Montchamp. Turnbull went forward on a personal reconnaissance to plot a way back to the battalion. A German sniper concealed in a hedgerow shot him through the head; he died instantly.

His body was recovered after the position was retaken later that day by Sergeant Fred Llewellyn, one of his own men, who carried Turnbull's personal effects back through the Welsh Guards lines and, eventually, to his widow Elizabeth in Glamorgan. The Welsh Guards lost more than 100 men in the fighting around Montchamp on 5 August 1944.

A county captain who had filled almost every role available to a 1930s amateur — Cambridge Blue, England middle-order batsman, Glamorgan secretary, Welsh rugby international, England squash player — Turnbull was already secretary of his county and a member of the MCC committee when he joined the Welsh Guards in 1939. His wartime Glamorgan duties had been delegated to JC Clay; cricket assumed he would resume as captain in 1946.

“The most accomplished all-round sportsman ever produced by Wales.”

“He went forward to look for a way back for his men. He never came back himself.”

Glamorgan held a memorial service at Cardiff Arms Park; the county pavilion gates at Sophia Gardens were later named after him. Wisden's 1945 obituary called him 'the most accomplished all-round sportsman ever produced by Wales'. JC Clay took over as captain on a caretaker basis until Wilfred Wooller assumed the role and led Glamorgan to their first County Championship in 1948.