Tony Hibbert

James Anthony Hibbert (6 December 1917 – 12 October 2014), was a British Army officer who fought in the Second World War. During a military career that began in 1935 and ended in 1947, Hibbert saw action in the Battle of France, the North African Campaign, the Italian Campaign and Operation Market Garden. After those battles, he led a T-Force unit in Operation Eclipse, a campaign carried out by the Allies shortly before V-E Day.

In civilian life after his time in the army, Hibbert enlarged and diversified his family's wine and spirits business. His restless first retirement, which began in the early 1970s, was followed by a 1981 retirement attempt that led his wife and him to ownership of Cornwall's Trebah Garden, which they went on to restore to its prewar splendour. The son of a Royal Flying Corps pilot, Hibbert decided to enter the British Army while he was in Germany working as a vineyard apprentice for his family's wine business. Evacuated from Dunkirk on the tugboat "Sun X", Hibbert was mentioned in dispatches that described his meritorious actions in the face of the enemy and were sent to the high command. Having been redesignated No. 11 Special Air Service Battalion in November 1940, the unit became the 1st Parachute Battalion the following September. their intact objective in the operation. In the operation's plan, the bridge had had to be held for only two days, but the two units, along with other elements of the 1st Airborne Division, held its northern end, against fierce opposition, for three. The force consisted of some hundreds of men from the 5th King's Regiment of the British Army and the 30th Assault Unit of the Royal Navy.

Swedish intelligence reports that the Red Army would violate the Yalta Agreement and advance from Germany to Denmark had prompted Operation Eclipse. but there was a question whether the 21st Army Group had had the authority to issue such an order. As a sailor himself, he competed worldwide in the International Moth Class of dinghy, Not until they had received a visit from the Secretary of the Cornwall Garden Society, eight days after they had moved in, What began as a three-year commitment on their part to restore the garden became a decades-long open-ended undertaking that gave them what Hibbert called the happiest years of their lives.

In 2006, Hibbert was presented an MBE for his contribution to tourism and sailing. With respect to being honoured by what had been the enemy, Hibbert remarked that he couldn not imagine that "many people have been honoured by both sides".

Hibbert died at his home on 12 October 2014, at the age of 96. At the time of his death, Trebah Garden ranked as one of Cornwall's biggest horticultural attractions. The garden was in the hands of the Trebah Garden Trust, which the Hibberts had created and to which they had donated it.

Hibbert's funeral took place 3 November 2014 at the parish church of the village of Mawnan Smith, the location of Trebah Garden. Lieutenant Colonel Giles Timms, Commanding Officer of 4th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, observed that Hibbert's legacy lives on in the Hibbert Sword, presented annually to the most-promising officer of the airborne forces.