Lieutenant Anthony Benoit Guise 1916 - 1944 24 years old on entering Royal Artillery 217042 Royal Indian Artillery attd. 13 H.A.A. Regt., Died on Active Service 23/07/1944   More of the life of Anthony Benoit Guise More of the life A.B.Guise, particularly during World War 2

Little is known of the work and life of Anthony Guise before the war other than that he was an artist and had been to Camberwell Art College. A card indicates that his address at one time was 16 Kirkstall Road Streatham SW2 which was different from the family address at 4 Pinfold Road. The first letter that we have during the war is to his mother in about April 1940 from Catterick training camp. 
Letters from May 1941 indicate that he has enlisted and has started officer training. This training went on for some time until he was commissioned and then he spent time in Heavy Anti-Aircraft regiment in England and Scotland and as far north are the very top of Shetland in Unst.  In late 1943, he embarked for India, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, and eventually arrived in Bombay in December 1944.   Letters suggest that over the 2½ years of  his training and operational time in England he pent time at the following places:

At some of these places he was on active service as an officer in a gun battery - 
Nitshill Glasgow - Blantyreferme Camp, Kinross, Unst in Shetland

In May 1941 he met with Don Haycraft in training and sent him with an open invitation  to his family home, following a letter to his mother..

A  letter to his mother, whose name was Vera but was usually referred to as  "Mater" or "The Mater" “ Darling V,  Introducing Donald … pall of mine. Has met Gertie, the Andersons and Stevenson’s – we do things together. Fix him up with bath & meals etc and get Widdy to show him the local dumps and tell the girls to look after him. Know you’ll all like him, he is quite used to me”  Also in the letter there is the statement that he should be home on leave on the 20th June 1941.

It is known that Don Haycraft and his cousin Joan Dibdin visited the family together in May or June 1941 and that Peter, Joan’s brother, had also been introduced to the family after this.
All visitors to the Guise family were immediately drawn into a powerful and expanding family dynamic centred on Mater (Vera Guise) and her two daughters Yvonne and Maria. 

Anthony met Joan, his wife to be, on his anticipated leave of late June 1941. Follow a very passionate year or so, they married in 1942.  Photographed with his son on embarkation leave before sailing to India.

His boat was sunk in the Mediterranean and eventually continued on his journey. 
The story goes that he abandoned ship fully prepared, unwilling to loose a good pair of boots.

From letters it seems that Anthony was in India by 9th Jan 1944 
On the 21 January, he wrote describing the temporary bungalow he was having built apparently in India.
By the 9th May he was in Ceylon.

Drawing of his tent while in India 

Drawings of the 'bungalow' that he designed and had made in Ceylon.

On 2nd June 1944 he wrote home from India Command in Ceylon.

  Enlarged map

	Mount Lavinia Hotel was being used as a Military Hospital.   Below  Examples of 40mm Bofor Heavy Artillery,

While in Ceylon he had his own quarters built by local labour and his men.
This is not much reference to war action in his letters but there is reference to having to censor his men’s letters home and noting how lonely they felt. Also he was shocked by the infidelity they experienced from their wives, up to 50% and some bearing children by others. Again, he notes how forgiving the men were and how faithful they were bearing in mind the opportunities on the Indian continent.

From the 180 or so letters home to his mother, sisters and the love of his life, the reader can begin to develop some insight into the nature of the man and how he adapted to army life that really was not a world that, as an art student, he would not have chosen.

From Ceylon it is probable that he was due to be sent with his men to Malaya to fight the Japanese and he, at some point, had the dilemma of  rejecting a post at Army HQ in Ceylon or India in favour of staying with his men and going into battle. 

Anthony Benoit Guise died by drowning (he may have help to save a friend) at Mount Lavinia. There were serious problems with rip tides in the area and three people died that day.

There is a letter written to Joan in August 1944 after Tony's death  remembering  their last time together socially at the Captain's Cabin of Haymarket. I managed to visit the pub and take photographs a week before it closed for demolition.
Dear Mrs Guise I would like you to accept these few lines from me as an expression of my deepest sympathy in your great loss.I am hoping that you will remember me, if I remind you of the occasion when I had a drink with you and Tony in the Capt’s Cabin* shortly before leaving England. Tony and I became good friends on our way out here, and, as you know we shared a variety of experiences. On our arrival in India, we applied to be posted together to an Indian Unit and our application was granted. On joining this Regt., our ways divided slightly, as Tony was at RHQ, and I am in a Battery. Never the less, we did see each other frequently. Tony immediately made many friends, and was liked and respected as an officer --- particularly, in my Battery, by my O.C., and fellow officers. His loss, Mrs Guise, was a great blow to us all. We miss him very, very much. Once again, please accept my deepest sympathy. Yours Very Sincerely        Richard Souray.

More of the life of Anthony Benoit Guise