Post
by Christopher Kreuzer » Wed Mar 13, 2024 8:09 pm
Thank you for asking, Paul. I too had retreated from my initial theory, but it would still be good to find out who this person is! Would you concur (or anyone else reading along) that Lt. O. Range and Capt. O. Range are probably the same person, and that (somehow) finding out who was promoted from Lt. to Capt. in 1943 or 1944 would help? That and the known dates they were playing chess in London must narrow it considerably.
In trying to find out how many soldiers there were in the Royal Netherlands Brigade, I read that there was a fair amount of movement in and out of it (e.g. to commando units). Apparently, "the unit never totalled more than about 2,000 men at one time with a total of around 3,000 serving" (from the Wikipedia article).
How many Lieutenants and Captains would you expect for that number?
We really need a new thread titled: "Who was O. Range?"...
There is the possibility that he saw active service in Normandy, where some from this formation were killed during the fighting. You would have thought if that happened that news would have filtered back to the chess club in London that was centred on the Netherlands Brigade.
EDIT: It is, of course, possible that "O. Range" is not in fact Dutch, but another nationality and enlisted in the R.N.B. for some reason, a desire to fight for the "Free Dutch" in the same way that people who were not French fought for the "Free French" forces. He might also have been part of the pre-war London-resident Dutch population. It is still not clear, though, why his identity needed to be hidden. If he was not Dutch, the answer might lie in similar reasons for why Tartakower used a different name (see the suggestion by John Saunders relating to a need to avoid repercussions for relatives living in the occupied countries).
