The Fighting Travers in World War Two

List of ‘The Fighting Travers’ who served in (or were closely associated with) the armed forces during WW2

In the 1960s, Brigadier JRT Aldous, a descendant of Lt Col Robert Travers of Timoleague, County Cork, wrote (but did not publish) his Family Notebook covering five generations of his family. One of the Notebook’s appendices contained a list of over eighty members of the Travers family who had served in the armed forces from the seventeenth century onwards (excepting anyone called up for National Service).

Useful as Aldous’s list is, it only contained people who were called Travers; he omitted those members of the family who, whilst having also served in the armed forces, had a female Travers in their line of descent and therefore bore a different surname. My purpose in compiling my own list (which includes both men and women) was to remedy this omission. It is striking that of the forty-eight WW2 veterans I mention, only eight are actually called Travers.

For the moment, the list only consists of descendants of the original Fighting Travers and those descended from Lt Col Travers of Timoleague. However, the list will eventually be expanded to include the names of other relatives of theirs who served in the armed forces. 

I would like to thank Jeff Travers (a descendant, like myself, of Capt Nicholas Travers) and Rod Kerr (a descendant of Maj Gen Sir Robert Travers) for their many suggestions and assistance with this list. 

           Paul Strickland                                                                                                             August 2026