Greville Cumming

Lieutenant Greville Cobbett Elliot ("Grev") Cumming was an American officer of the British Army who died during the Second World War.
He was born on 17 September 1922, in Los Angeles, California,California, Birth Index, 1905-1995, familysearch.org. the son of Fred Elliot Dakin and Dorothy Cumming, a silent film actress originally of Australia. His mother remarried in 1932, to Allan McNab, an artist and designer from Britain. Cumming attended St George's School, Newport and entered Princeton University in 1940."Greville Cobbett Cumming", Princeton Alumni Weekly, Volume 44, p. 14 He abandoned his studies in 1942 with the intention of enlisting in the British Army. This he accomplished, and, in August 1943,The London Gazette (36186), p. 4303, 28 September 1943. Retrieved 20 August 2013. he obtained a commission as a second lieutenant in the 10th Battalion (The Rangers), The King's Royal Rifle Corps - a unit which, in the preceding year, had contained a contingent of American officers.Dietrich-Berryman, Eric, Hammond, Charlotte, White, Ronald White (2013), Passport Not Required: U. S. Volunteers in the Royal Navy, 1939-1941 Cumming and a Lieutenant Lionel Mosseri, who would be killed in December 1944 while attached to the French Maquis, were the only American officers belonging to the KRRC who did not transfer to the US Army.Wake, Sir Hereward & Deedes, William Francis (1949), Swift and Bold: The Story of the King's Royal Rifle Corps in the Second World War, 1939-1945, p. xiv.
Cumming served with the KRRC in the Italian Campaign and went onto volunteer as a reinforcement for the Royal Fusiliers, which had landed at Anzio.Princeton Alumni Weekly, 27 October 1944, p. 7. With the battalion, Cumming was actively involved in the desperate defence of the Anzio beachhead. He died on 28 February 1944 after his position was subject to an intense artillery bombardment. According to his Princeton obituary, Cumming succumbed to his wounds during a blood transfusion at a first-aid post. A soldier under his command, writing to Cumming's parents, gave an account of his final day with the battalion:"The last day we had him he crawled out under machine gun fire and snipers to bring in one of the men. I suppose they will send a medal and say what it is for, but only God knows what act of bravery they can pick on because in three of the most terrible weeks men ever lived through, he was a hero, day after day....I'm an old soldier - four years' active fighting - but in those four years I've never seen a braver man than Lieutenant Cumming..."Cumming is buried in Beach Head War Cemetery, Anzio. His brother, Anthony, belonged to the United States Marine Corps.
==Notes==
==References==
*Cumming, Greville Cobbett Elliot, cwgc.org. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
Category:1922 births
Category:1944 deaths
Category:American military personnel
Category:British Army
Category:Buried in Italy
Category:Lieutenants