Mike Cumberlege

With the benefit of hindsight it was highly appropriate that Cadet Captain Cumberlege won the Geography prize for 1921.  In what was to be a tragically short life he travelled the globe, at first for employment, then for pleasure and finally in wartime to undertake acts of sabotage.

Born in 1905, Mike Cumberlege entered Pangbourne in 1919 aged fourteen when the College was still in its infancy.  A keen boxer and rugby player he became a Cadet Captain in 1921.  He was also an enthusiastic member of the Debating Society where he wasn’t afraid of courting controversy with his opinions.  On leaving Pangbourne he joined the Merchant Navy and in 1926 gained his Second Mates Certificate.  Later he would leave the Merchant Navy and go it alone skippering luxury yachts around the Mediterranean for wealthy American businessmen. 

In 1940 Mike was called up for service and spent the next six months chasing smugglers off the coast of France.  By 1941 he’d transferred to SOE Middle East section and began his clandestine work which included two attempts to blow up the Corinth canal.  Sadly both attempts failed and after the second attempt, code name Operation Locksmith, Cumberledge and his men decided to remain in the area in the hope of making a third attempt.  Shortly after communication was lost with the group and it wasn’t until enquiries were made after the war that their fate was known.

Italian secret police had become curious about the group and the locals had begun to turn against them.  Eventually their hideout was discovered and a short time later they were captured by a German patrol.  After several months of torture and brutality, Michael Cumberledge was executed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was thirty nine years old.