19-05-2025
Kenneth Batt obituary: El Alamein trooper
It was one of the ironies of the war that many a Territorial horseman saw action in tanks before many a regular mechanical did. Trooper Kenneth Batt of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry (RWY) was one of them, and at the time of his death had a claim to be the oldest veteran by date of enlistment.
Kenneth (Ken) Douglas Henry Batt was born in Swindon in 1921, an only child. At 17 an apprentice at the Great Western Railway workshops in the town, and confessing to feeling rather lonely, he tried to volunteer with the RWY, the senior of the 50 and more yeomanry regiments of the Territorial Army (TA), 14 of which were still horsed, the others by then having converted to armoured cars,
