Stan Morgan, the World War II hero who played for Arsenal and Brighton
Stan Morgan. Brighton and Arsenal fans could be forgiven for never having heard of him. After all, he played only twice for the Gunners and never actually registered as a player for the Albion, yet he provides a link between the old Highbury and the old Goldstone that goes far beyond football.
Morgan was a hero who laid his life on the line on countless occasions during World War II. A Royal Fusilier and then later a military parachutist, he served on operations in northern and southern France, Greece, Italy and Palestine during the conflict – all whilst still finding the time to score 16 goals in 31 appearances for Brighton.
Born in Abergwynfi in Wales – answers on a postcard as to how you pronounce that one – Morgan was a forward who joined Arsenal as an amateur at the age of 18 in 1938. At the outbreak of war, the Gunners encouraged all their junior players to sign up for the forces and by the time he turned professional at Highbury in 1941, World War II was two years old and he was a Corporal in the 11th Battalion Royal Fusiliers having originally joined the 2nd/8th (1st City of London) Battalion Royal Fusiliers as a Private in 1939.
Morgan found himself playing for the Albion over the course of the 1941-42 and 1942-43 seasons thanks to the ‘Guest Player System’. This enabled players stationed in a particular district to make up the numbers for a local club, having first received the permission of their commanding officer. Brighton manager Charlie Webb took full advantage of the system, calling upon the services of a host of players now based in Sussex who were otherwise signed to some of the biggest clubs in the land.
This proved to be particularly beneficial when the King’s Liverpool Regiment were posted to Newhaven in March 1941, with the majority of Liverpool’s players serving with the regiment and therefore available to the Albion. Whilst the continued presence in Sussex of ‘the Liverpools’ as they became known throughout the war meant that Webb’s lineups had an increasingly Scouse look to them, he also borrowed his fair share of players from Arsenal.
Morgan was one of those, making his Brighton debut on November 15th 1941 in a 2-2 draw at home to Watford. He was pretty much a regular over the next 12 weeks from that point, scoring his first goal for the club on Christmas Day 1941 in a 4-1 win over Clapton Orient and notching a hat-trick in a 5-2 win over Tottenham Hotspur at the Goldstone on January 17th 1942 – a pretty satisfactory afternoon’s work for an Arsenal player, you suspect.
A month later and Morgan missed three games, although he had a pretty bloody good excuse. Chief of Combined Operations, Admiral Lord Mountbatten, had proposed a raid against a radar station at Bruneval, near Le Havre. The recently formed ‘C’ Company 2nd Parachute Battalion under the command of Major J.D Frost was to be dropped at night by the RAF, with the aim being to capture and hold the station while the radar was dismantled and its parts brought safely to a nearby beach for a dawn evacuation by the Royal Navy.
The daring raid took place on February 27th 1942. Morgan and his fellow Arsenal-turned-Albion-guest-player Cyril Tooze were both part of the sea rescue, manning the guns of the landing craft which retrieved Major Frost, the parachutists, the radar and two German radar technicians as a bonus from right under the noses of a German naval patrol operating nearby.
At a time when the war wasn’t going particularly well, the Bruneval Raid give the nation a moral boosting and exciting success. More importantly though, it helped reaffirm Winston Churchill’s belief in the future of Airborne Forces, while muffling its critics who were becoming ever louder.
The Goldstone regulars were certainly impressed. Morgan and Tooze received a rapturous reception on their next appearance for the Albion, a 0-0 draw against Millwall which came just one week after they’d been at a gun post on a boat out on the English Channel. 14 days after his heroics on the French coast, Morgan was scoring his seventh goal of the season in a 4-2 defeat away for Brighton against his own club, Arsenal.
Morgan featured sporadically over the course of the 1942-43 season, playing 12 times and weighing in with nine more goals to take his total to 16 in 31 games for the Albion. His final appearance for the club came on March 20th 1943 and he signed off with a goal in a 1-1 Football League South Cup draw away at Watford before the war took him away from Sussex.
Serving as a Sergeant with the 6th Battalion (Royal Welch) Parachute Regiment, Morgan saw action in Italy in 1944 as part of Operation Hasty and Operation Dragoon, Athens in late 1944 during Operation Manna as well as serving in Southern France and Palestine.
After the war, he returned to Arsenal and although he only made two appearances for the Gunners, he is listed as being a part of their squad that were crowned champions of England at the end of the 1947-48 season. He went onto play for Walsall, Millwall and Leyton Orient and ended up with a peacetime record of 46 goals from 264 games before his retirement in 1956, working as a representative for Kenwood before his death in London in 1971.
