Robert Peverell Hichens
Lieutenant Commander Robert Peverell Hichens, (2 March 1909 – 13 April 1943) was the most highly decorated officer of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), being awarded two Distinguished Service Orders, three Distinguished Service Crosses and three Mentions in Despatches. He was also recommended for a Victoria Cross after being killed in action in April 1943. Before the Second World War, Hichens was a keen sportsman who rowed for Magdalen College, Oxford, and competed in the Double sculls at the Henley Regatta. He also competed in International Fourteen sailing events and three times participated in the Fastnet race. On land he raced in hill climbing events in Somerset and also entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans race three times. During the Second World War, he rose in rank to become a lieutenant commander and commanded the 6th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla and later the 8th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla. Early life Robert Peverell Hichens was born 2 March 1909, the son of Doctor Peverell Smythe Hichens and Constance Sawbridge Hichens. He spent his early life in Northampton, until the start of the Great War when his father—an officer in a Territorial Army unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps—was sent to France, and the rest of the family moved to St Mawes in Cornwall. It was when living in Cornwall that Hichens and his sister Loveday were taught how to sail, eventually sailing their dinghy Arethusa on Carrick Roads. Education In 1919, following the Great War, the family returned to the Northampton area, and Hichens was sent to a prep school nearby until 1921, when he was enrolled in Marlborough College. In 1922, Hichens' father, by now a consulting physician at Northampton General hospital, retired and the family moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands, purchasing Havelet House just outside Saint Peter Port. Hichens entered Magdalen College, Oxford, to read law in 1927. A keen sportsman, he started rowing and within six months was in the Magdalan second eight; by the following year he made the first eight as stroke oarsman. In the Eights Week races (the annual summer Head of the River Race at Oxford), when Hichens was at Magdalen, they came third in 1928, sixth in 1929 and eighth in 1930, which was the college's lowest position in the race since 1876. While at university he also joined the Officers Training Corps, receiving a commission as second lieutenant in the infantry on 2 June 1929. In 1929, the Hichens family had purchased Bodrennick House at Flushing, Cornwall, which they moved into in 1930, after the death of Hichens' father. Married life Robert Hichens met his future wife, Catherine Gilbert Enys of Enys, Penryn, in 1928; they were married at St Gluvias church, Penryn, Cornwall, in April 1931. The following year he joined a firm of solicitors, Reginald Rodgers and son of Falmouth, Cornwall, as an articled clerk to be instructed as a solicitor. Hichens also trained in London with Mackrell's of Bedford Square; it was when working