Francis Hugonin

Francis Edgar Hugonin OBE (16 August 1897 – 5 March 1967) was an English soldier and cricketer. A right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper, he played first-class cricket for the British Army and also for Essex in 1927 and 1928. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Royal Artillery and saw active service in the Second World War, during much of which he was a prisoner of war. Life Born in Kensington in 1897, Hugonin became a career soldier after training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery on 15 October 1915. By the 1930s he was married with children, and in 1937 he travelled to India with his family on the ship Dilwarra. He was posted to Singapore in January 1939 with the 3rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Artillery, and became a prisoner of war of the Japanese in February 1942 at the Fall of Singapore, during the Second World War. In September 1946, when he held the rank of acting lieutenant colonel, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his gallant war service as a prisoner of war, during which he had shown great defiance of the Japanese, had destroyed enemy equipment, and had defended his men, even to the extent of taking beatings for others. He managed to play first-class cricket during the middle years of his Army service. After the war, Hugonin became a Justice of the Peace. He died in Yorkshire in 1967. Cricketing career Hugonin made his first-class cricket debut in 1927, when he played for Essex against Oxford University. The following year, he played again for Essex against the touring West Indians before playing four County Championship matches. A match against Sussex was his last for Essex.