Bune, John Cuthbert, son of Frank Cuthbert Bune, barrister-at-law, of Beckenham, and Gladys, d. of Henry Collins of Bromley, Kent; b. 17 Apr. 1914; adm. Sept. 1927 (A); left July 1932; St Cath. Coll. Camb., matric. 1933, BA 1936; Roy. Fusiliers 1939, transf. Parachute Regt (Maj.); m. Hilda Dorothy, d. of H. W. Thompson of Sydney, NSW; killed in action at Arnhem 17 Sept. 1944.
John Cuthbert Bune was born at Beckenham, Kent on the 17th of April 1914 the eldest son of Frank Cuthbert Bune, a barrister at law, and Gladys (nee Collins) Bune of 14, Oakwood Avenue, Beckenham, Kent, later of Lucas Grange, Haywards Heath in Sussex. He was educated at Westminster School where he was up Ashburnham from September 1927 to July 1932. He was a member of the 1st Cricket XI in 1932. He served as a Lance Corporal in the Officer Training Corps and achieved a School Certificate in December 1930. He then attended St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. He matriculated for St Catherine’s College, Cambridge on the 2nd of November 1933 where he read English and Law and graduated with a BA on the 23rd of June 1936. He won a Half Blue for Swimming in 1936 and was also a member of the University Water Polo team when they played Oxford in 1936. He went on to study law and was called to the Bar in 1941.
He was married at St Clement Danes, Strand on the 25th of November 1939 to Hilda Dorothy (nee Thompson) of Barton-on-Sea in Hampshire. They had two daughters, Susan S. born in 1940 and Alexandra J. C., born on the 9th of September 1943.
He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) on the 2nd of September 1939 and rose to the rank of Major before transferring to the Parachute Regiment on the 18th of April 1944. By September 1944 he had been appointed as second in command of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment.
At 8pm on the 15th of September 1944 John Bune was called to an officer’s briefing to receive orders for the Battalion’s part in Operation Market Garden, an airborne operation in conjunction with land forces to secure a river crossing across the Lower River Rhine, which was due to begin just 36 hours later. All other personnel were briefed the following day.
On the morning of the 17th of September 1944, the Battalion moved to Barkston Heath airfield where they boarded transport aircraft and took off at 11.30am. They landed at Renkum Heath, to the west of the town of Arnhem, at between 2.03pm and 2.08pm and had assembled by 2.45pm with only three men missing. They moved off from the drop zone at 3.40pm. Twenty minutes later they arrived at a railway station where they were briefed by an officer of the Reconnaissance Corps that there were enemy troops further up the railway line to their east and tanks on the road to the north. Unable to get up the railway line, they set out up the Amsterdamseweg, by which time the enemy tanks had withdrawn. At 5pm R Company attacked strong enemy positions astride the road, inflicting heavy casualties among the enemy troops and forcing them back. The Company then advanced to the Wolfhezerweg junction, where they became heavily engaged with enemy tanks and infantry and were unable to disengage when the rest of the Battalion went around this obstacle. Contact with R Company was lost at 6pm.
At 7.30pm, John Bune was sent back to make contact with R Company, returning at 10pm with the second in command of the Company who reported that, although they had managed to disengage, forward progress was slow as half of his men had become casualties and were in need of evacuation. The Battalion Medical Officer was ordered to take all available jeeps to evacuate the wounded with John Bune joining this party for the return to R Company’s positions. Although the convoy of wounded later reached Oosterbeek and were delivered to the dressing station at the Hartenstein Hotel, John Bune’s group is believed to have run into an ambush in the vicinity of the Dreyenseweg during which he was killed. He was recorded as missing at 3am the following morning. His body was recovered and was buried alongside the Dreyenseweg but was later exhumed and moved to its present location.
The St Catharine’s Society Magazine wrote of him: -
“It has been said that soldiering was among the last professions that John Bune would have chosen, for by instinct he was independent and Bohemian, impatient of routine and of a systematic society; but once in arms he turned the circumstance to glorious account. For the first four and a half years of the war he was in the Royal Fusiliers, and reached the rank of Major. Then, fearing that the years of his training might go for nothing, he transferred and became, in April 1944, second in command of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. And so to Arnhem. Bune came to S. Catharine's from Westminster, and gained his Half- Blue for swimming. Literature was, perhaps, his strongest interest, but, like his father, he turned to law, and in 1941 was called to the Bar. He leaves a widow and two daughters.”
He is commemorated on the war memorial at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
He is buried at Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery Plot 27, Row B, Grave 6.
