Major, Royal Artillery
Born: April 13th 1913
Died: April 8th 1943
Age at Death: 29
Killed, April 8th 1943
John was born on 13 April 1913 in Willesden, London, to Ethel May Peacock (née Firmin), a nurse, and Montague Peacock, an insurance clerk, who went on to serve as an airman in the Great War. In September 1939, the month that Britain entered the Second World War, he married Annabelle Pluck, who bore him a son, Michael, two years later.
Peacock fought with the 64th (Queen’s Own Royal Glasgow Yeomanry) Anti-Tank Regiment. In 1942–43 the regiment supported the 78th Infantry Division of the Royal Artillery during Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. The regiment was sometimes referred to by battle-hardened soldiers as the ‘Suicide Corps’ because, as one former soldier explained, ‘you had to be really close to the tanks for the firing to be effective’.
Peacock was killed in action on 8 April 1943. The date of his death and location of his grave, at the Medjez-El-Bab War Cemetery in Tunisia, suggest that he was killed during the 78th Division’s assault on the Axis lines that helped to extinguish the enemy presence in North Africa in May 1943.