Notes
John Stuart Alexander, known as Stuart, was born in the Wirral on 13 February 1920, the second son of Harold, a chartered accountant, and Winifred (née Scott). He was educated at Trearddur House School, Holyhead, and at Sedbergh School from 1933 to 1938. While still a junior he won the three and ten-mile steeplechases in 1937, and was later appointed Head of School.
Stuart Alexander entered Worcester College on 7 October 1938 but enlisted in the army on the outbreak of the Second World War and left Oxford without taking a degree. He trained with the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Cheshire Regiment in August 1940, joining the battalion in the Middle East in June 1942. He took part in the withdrawal from Gazala in July and saw action at El Alamein in October 1942.
On 13 November 1942, with the British advance from El Alamein well under way, Stuart Alexander was ordered to salvage abandoned ammunition and took a truck through what he took to be a gap in an enemy minefield. When they had gone some distance, the men on the back of the truck shouted that they could see mines. Alexander halted the truck and ordered his men to dismount and walk out of the minefield. While they were doing this, he guided the driver as he reversed the truck; however, during this manoeuvre the rear wheel hit a mine and Lieutenant Stuart Alexander was killed in the subsequent explosion. He was 22 years old.
Stuart Alexander is buried at El Alamein War Cemetery, and commemorated on the war memorials at Sedbergh School, at Heswell and Worcester College, Oxford.