Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Major John
Geoffrey "Geoff" Appleyard, DSO, MC and bar was a British Army officer,
who served in the Commandos and Special Air Service during World War II.
Appleyard was born in Bramley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, the son of John
Ernest Appleyard, a successful motor engineer, and Mary Elizabeth
Northrop. He grew up in Linton, West Yorkshire, and was educated at
Bootham School in York, where he combined academic success with natural
history and roof-climbing, and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he
obtained a first in Engineering and a skiing blue, while he was also his
college's Captain of Boats, and competed as a highly successful
international skier. Appleyard was commissioned into the Royal Army
Service Corps on 1 April 1939 with the rank of Second Lieutenant.
Mobilized for active service on 24 August 1939, he commanded an RASC
mobile motor repair workshop as part of the British Expeditionary Force
in northern France
