The Chief of the Defence Staff was on his way back from a visit to New Zealand, and — bypassing the Acting CDS — Leach sought out the Defence Secretary John Nott in the House of Commons, finding that the minister and his advisers were with Mrs Thatcher in the Prime Minister’s office, undecided about what to do. What happened next caused Leach to be described by Andrew Marr in his documentary series History of Modern Britain as Margaret Thatcher’s “knight in shining gold braid”.
His advice was clear: the Falklands should be recaptured, “Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little”.
Major Freddie Scott
Soldier with 'The 52nd’ who braved machine gun fire and grenades in Normandy to be awarded an MC
Soon after 9pm on D-Day, his glider crash-landed in the fields around Ranville, about five miles north of Caen. In his memoirs, Scott later wrote: “The Germans had erected poles all over the area but, in true Teutonic fashion, they were all in straight lines. So our pilot landed between them. The poles sheared off the wings and helped us slow down.”
In the following weeks, Scott led a number of fighting patrols into German lines and, on August 25, had the task of infiltrating a known enemy strongpoint. When his leading section came under grenade and machine gun fire, Scott pushed on ahead, opened up with his sten gun, and drove the enemy out, inflicting many casualties. The citation for his Military Cross declared that his “example, leadership and determination were largely responsible for the success of the action and were an inspiration to the men under him”.
Rear-Admiral Nicholas Goodhart
Engineer and world-class glider pilot whose carrier landing aid helped propel the Navy into the jet age
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8468948/Rear-Admiral-Nicholas-Goodhart.html
Goodhart’s idea was to position a concave mirror on the deck’s port side, flanked by green lights. A powerful beam, directed at the mirror itself, created a bright orange ball of light visible to approaching aircraft; by keeping this visual signal centred between the flanking green lights, pilots could be sure of the correct glide path for a safe landing.
The invention was promptly taken up by the Royal Navy, in 1954, and by the US Navy the following year, greatly increasing safety. Together with the angled deck (which shifted the runway five degrees off centre) and the steam catapult, Goodhart’s mirror was one of three great British inventions in the postwar development of naval aviation, and led to a dramatic fall in accident rates, from 35 per 10,000 in 1954, to seven per 10,000 in 1957. He was awarded the US Legion of Merit in 1958; the British government made a small payment.
Lieutenant Tul Bahadur Pun, VC
Gurkha who charged alone across open ground under intense fire to take an enemy position
Gurkha whose lonely heroism helped to turn the tables in the fight against the Japanese in Burma
Tulbahadur Pun, from the village of Banduk in the Parbat district of Nepal, volunteered for the Indian Army in 1941 and after initial training at Abbotabad was posted to the 3rd Battalion 6th Gurkha Rifles. This unit formed part of Brigadier Michael Calvert’s 77 Brigade preparing to take part in Operation Thursday, the second and larger of Major-General Orde Wingate’s long-range penetration operations inside Japanese-occupied Burma by the Chindits — the special force he had formed and trained.
The operation began in February 1944 when 16 Brigade, under Brigadier Bernard Fergusson, set off to march from a railhead in Assam to attack the Japanese at Indaw. On March 10 two more brigades were flown by troopcarrying gliders to landing grounds in the jungle. It was a hazardous enterprise, as one of the landing grounds could not be used because of logging, but 37 of the 54 gliders landed safely or with relatively minor casualties.
After two months fighting the Japanese, the Chindit force, less 16 Brigade that was flown out having marched in, was placed under the command of the US General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who commanded a largely Chinese army operating in northern Burma. The Chindits were sent north to support Stilwell, and Calvert’s 77 Brigade was ordered to attack the Japanese railhead at Mogaung.
Initially, Calvert resisted the order as although capture of Mogaung would prevent the Japanese from reinforcing their troops opposing two of Stilwell’s Chinese divisions, his troops were close to exhaustion. But after reinforcement by air, including new officers to replace those killed or seriously wounded, he headed for Mogaung.
The 3/6th Gurkhas took the high ground above Mogaung as the monsoon broke at the end of May, finding the enemy well dug in around the town and railway bridge over the Mogaung river. After three weeks of bitter fighting in appalling conditions of mud and monsoon rain, Calvert was ready to launch his final assault even though his battalions were down to little more than company strength. 3/6th Gurkhas, the strongest with 230 men, was ordered to lead the attack, with 180 men of the South Staffordshire Regiment on June 23, beginning at 3am.
Tulbahadur Pun was with B Company, whose commander, Captain Michael Allmand, was mortally wounded as he led the assault. The leading platoons were pinned down by intense Japanese fire, and the whole of Tulbahadur’s section killed or wounded except for the section commander, himself and one other rifleman. The section commander led a charge on the Japanese position stemming the advance, but both he and the other rifleman were wounded.
Seizing the section Bren light machinegun and firing from the hip, Talbahadur continued alone. On reaching the position he killed three of the occupants and put five to flight. He then gave supporting fire to his platoon, enabling it to reach its objective.
Allmand and Tulbahadur Pun were awarded the Victoria Cross, Allmand posthumously. Announcing the capture of Mogaung and the railway bridge over the river, Stilwell’s spokesman gave the credit to the Chinese. Calvert riposted with a signal, “Mogaung having been taken by the Chinese, 77 Brigade is proceeding to take Umbrage.” Stilwell’s intelligence officer remarked: “Umbrage must be a very small place as it isn’t marked on the map.”
In 1945 Talbahadur Pun was promoted to havildar (sergeant) and served at the 6th Gurkhas regimental centre until Indian independence in 1947, when he joined the 2nd Battalion, which was to form part of the British Brigade of Gurkhas. He served almost to the end of the Malayan Emergency campaign, reaching the rank of regimental sergeant-major. He displayed great skill on jungle operations and was an inspiration to all ranks. On his retirement on pension in May 1959, he was granted the honorary rank of lieutenant (Queen’s Gurkha Officer).
In the last few years Tulbahadur Pun had been in the forefront of the Gurkha veterans who fought for the right to settle in the UK, a campaign to which the actress Joanna Lumley, whose father Major James Lumley participated in the battle for Mogaung, gave energetic and widely publicised support. Government ministers had ruled that those retiring before 1997 did not have that right. In 2007 Tulbahadur Pun won the right to live in Britain, but many other Gurkhas were still denied the opportunity, and he continued to support their legal campaign. In September 2008 a High Court Judge ruled that the military covenant between Britain and the Gurkhas compelled the rewarding of their long and distinguished service by a grant of residence in the country. In May 2009 the Government announced that all Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years’ service would be allowed to settle in the UK.
Tulbahadur Pun is survived by his second wife, Punisara Pun, and by two sons and eight daughters.
Lieutenant Tulbahadur Pun, VC, was born on March 23, 1923. He died on April 20, 2011, aged 88
William Craig
Ulster Protestant firebrand who led the Vanguard movement but later moderated his stance
Pugnacious Unionist politician whose hardline Vanguard party campaigned aggressively for an independent Ulster in the 1970s
William Craig was a senior Ulster Unionist and the bellicose orator and leader of the Ulster Vanguard movement, which campaigned for independence for the province in the 1970s.
His actions when serving as home affairs minister in the Stormont Government in October 1968 are regarded by some as having given the decisive impetus to the explosive development of the Troubles. Craig had placed restrictions on a march by civil rights campaigners in Londonderry which led to three days of rioting when marchers were hit with batons by police after they had strayed into an area that Craig had pronounced to be off-limits.
Craig went on to denounce the civil rights movement as being a political front for armed Republican activity. He was dismissed by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O’Neill, later that year. Craig had made it clear that he supported the idea of an independent Northern Ireland, a concept that O’Neill regarded as delusional and counterproductive.
Craig went on to build up a power base for himself within unionism, preparing the ground for the later creation of his own political party. He became head of the Ulster Loyalist Association which he led from 1969 to 1972. The official Unionist Party withdrew the whip from him in May 1970.
After the Bloody Sunday massacre on January 30, 1972, in which British Army soldiers opened fire on civil right protesters and bystanders, causing 13 deaths from gunshot wounds and several more from other causes, the Stormont parliament’s authority seemed fatally eroded. Craig chose this moment to launch the Ulster Vanguard movement, and the organisation was formed on February 9, 1972.
It aimed to be an umbrella body for all hardline Unionists, although in reality it was an amalgamation of Belfast-based workers groups and vigilante factions alarmed at the recent indications by the UK Government at Westminster, which had seemed ambiguous about the nature of Ulster’s position in the UK.
At a rally in Lisburn in February 1972, Craig inspected the battledress-clad ranks of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and declared: “We are determined to preserve our British tradition and way of life, and God help those who get in our way.” His words were directed mainly at Republican terrorist groups, but also constituted an unconcealed threat to any intervention by the Conservative Government of Edward Heath in London. Craig repeated these histrionic gestures the following month in Ormeau Park beside the Lagan Valley. Before an audience of 60,000 UDA men in combat jackets, he warned: “When the politicians fail us, it may be our job to liquidate the enemy.” Moderate Unionist leaders were quick to point out the ambience of fascist storm troopers that these rallies conjured up.
William Craig was born in 1924 and educated at Queen’s University Belfast. He joined the RAF as an 18-year-old, becoming a Lancaster rear-gunner, and was involved in raids on Germany towards the end of the war.
After demobilisation he became a solicitor and was elected to the Northern Ireland Parliament as MP for Larne in 1960, quickly gaining a reputation as a hardliner during the civil rights campaign of the 1960s and serving as Unionist Chief Whip in 1963.
It was in O’Neill’s cabinet that Craig first suggested that the threat by the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson to interfere in Northern Ireland should be met with a counter-threat of independence. With the introduction of troops on the streets of Ulster and the eventual abolition of Stormont in 1973, numbers of Unionists harboured the belief that Britain was seeking a direct-rule solution to cut through what had become a costly and embarrassing problem. Stormont’s suspension was met with indignation by many Unionists in Ulster, and Vanguard immediately called for a two-day stoppage, which was observed by 190,000 workers.
Craig’s and Vanguard’s stance was that the battle against Republicanism and the preservation of Ulster’s British heritage could be best achieved through greater, if not total, independence. Backed by the presence of the UDA, Vanguard then proceeded to engage in a campaign against the British Government, in which it sometimes appeared to be threatening the authority of the Crown, at others to accept it.
A deliberately spoken man, Craig had intellectual integrity, and Vanguard did attract articulate, educated and ambitious party members (among them the young David Trimble), although its involvement with Loyalist paramilitary groups was for many an unpalatable one. Most Protestants were appalled by battles between Loyalists and the Army — such as the riots in East Belfast in October 1972 that led the UDA to declare “war” on Crown forces — and Craig began to sense a growing revulsion among the small and medium business-class patrons who had originally backed him. Moreover, to most Unionists talk of independence was anathema. To placate these Craig proposed a federated United Kingdom made up of seven regions (including Southern Ireland), each having separate parliaments but with power centred in Westminster.
The failure of the Ulster Unionist council to reject the 1973 White Paper on Northern Ireland led to Craig’s departure from the Unionist Party to form the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party, which won in North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly. During the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of 1974, which sought to destroy the Sunningdale Agreement on power- sharing, Craig — along with the Rev Ian Paisley — was an important influence. He was also regarded as the link with paramilitary groups such as the UDA and UVF that gave the strike its credibility.
Paradoxically, Craig’s leanings towards independence ultimately led him to seek rapprochement with the Catholic community. He envisaged joint allegiance to a new state that would make the concept of “power sharing” irrelevant. Soon after he announced his vision of a “united Northern Ireland”, it emerged in February 1973 that he had been having secret talks with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to discuss how this cross-community consensus should be fostered.
However, his conciliatory approach was unsettling for the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) coalition. After the collapse of Sunningdale, in the Constitutional Convention of 1974-76, Craig turned his back on the hardline taken by the UUUC in his continued willingness to talk to the SDLP. Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1974 to 1976, recalled Craig paying him a visit in the wake of the UUUC’s rejection of the idea of power-sharing, saying that he was going to have to resign. Rees persuaded him to carry on, although he eventually quit as head of Vanguard in the Convention in protest at the decision by the United Ulster Unionists’ coalition to call off talks with the SDLP. He and Vanguard were expelled from the UUUC in 1975.
His condemnation of the second Loyalist strike of 1977 led to bitter denunciation by Paisley, and that year Craig eventually disbanded Vanguard. In the 1979 Westminster elections, the UDA backed the Paisleyite Peter Robinson in East Belfast against the “turncoat” Craig, now back in the Ulster Unionist Party. He lost his seat by 64 votes.
In 1982, when elections were held for the new Northern Ireland Assembly, Craig revived the name Vanguard for his candidacy in East Belfast. His failure to win the seat marked the end of his political career.
Away from the political limelight Craig was humorous, tolerant and cosmopolitan in his interests, which included travel, motoring and European politics (he was a member of the Council of Europe from 1976 to 1979). In later life he became something of a recluse.
He married, in 1960, Doris Hilgendorff. They had two sons.
William Craig, Ulster politician, was born on December 2, 1924. He died on April 25, 2011, aged 86
Royal Logistic Corps officer who became a high threat bomb disposal expert
Whatever the form of warfare — full-scale, counter-insurgency or low-intensity urban terrorism — landmines pose an insidious threat to morale and, consequently, to operational effectiveness. If every step or drive is loaded with dread of a sudden blast that tears off a limb or takes a life, then concentration on the job in hand becomes secondary. An anti-personnel mine taking off the foot of one man can halt a company of infantry in its tracks. The Taleban have found a deadly weapon to which safe disposal is the only counter.
Like every ammunition specialist, Lisa Head was a volunteer and highly trained. Applicants for the basic 16-month ammunition technical officer (ATO) course must display analytical minds and a calm and philosophical disposition. Doubt on either score leads to rejection no matter how keen the candidate. Until recently, it was considered that eight years’ training and experience were essential for an ATO to qualify as an advanced explosive device operator, previously known as a “high threat” specialist. Head completed her training in June 2009 and served in Northern Ireland as a member of a counter-IED team with 321 Squadron Royal Logistic Corps to gain experience.
She had served previously in Afghanistan and Iraq as an air transport liaison officer and began her tour of duty as a high-threat-bomb disposal expert in Helmand province in support of 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment at the end of March. On April 18, she had already disposed of one IED in an alleyway in Nar-e-Saraj — used by Afghan civilians as well by the security forces — before she was seriously injured by a second device that she had begun to disarm.
Head joined the corps in August 2005, having studied human biology at the University of Huddersfield, her home town. Commissioned in August 2006 she found the life and profession she was seeking in the Army — and with 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment in particular. She was regarded by those who served with her as a dedicated comrade in a demanding discipline. Four other female bomb disposal experts have served in Afghanistan.
She was unmarried.
Captain Lisa Head, bomb disposal expert, was born on November 30, 1981. She died, of injuries sustained in action in Helmand Province, on April 19, 2011, aged 29
