In February 1942 the British Ambassador in Cairo, Sir Miles Lampson, was having trouble with King Farouk, who refused to replace his prime minister with a political leader believed to be more sympathetic to British interests. He eventually threatened Farouk with abdication and exile.
Lt Col Ronald Borradaile A small force supported by light tanks and Army trucks was ordered to surround the Abdeen Palace in the hours of blackout. Borradaile, who was known to have an Egyptian girlfriend and had acquired a detailed knowledge of the confusing back streets of the city, was chosen to act as a guide.
At the palace the sentry refused to open the gates. Borradaile, a captain in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders (QOCH), broke them down and mounted guard on the King's quarters. Sir Miles entered and presented his ultimatum, whereupon Farouk capitulated.
Ronald George Borradaile was born on July 14 1914 in Tientsin, where his father, a sapper officer, was stationed. The family returned to England the following year and Ronnie eventually went to Wellington. He went on to Sandhurst where he was captain of hockey and tennis; he subsequently played hockey for the Army.
Borradaile was also an enthusiastic motor cyclist and, aged 21, won the coveted Gold Star at Brooklands for lapping the three-mile banked circuit at 100mph on a rented Grindlay-Peerless.
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He was commissioned into the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders and served with 2 QOCH on operations in Palestine from 1936 to 1937. There he was ordered to deal with ambushes during the Arab uprising against Mandatory authorities and he was wounded during a skirmish: he received an MC from King George VI, the Colonel of the Regiment, at a private investiture at Windsor.
One of the Battalion's unofficial duties was to escort and protect the High Priest of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the Celebration of Holy Fire. After prayers at the High Altar, Borradaile and a few fellow officers escorted the priest to a small room in the centre of the Church. At the appointed hour there was a rumble and a flash of light from above. Shortly after this, the High Priest emerged with a candle that had been lit by Holy Fire. Borradaile and his fellow subalterns had to link arms to fend off the press of worshippers.
Borradaile served with 2 QOCH in North Africa and in 1941 was wounded at the Battle of Halfaya Pass, on the Egyptian-Libyan border. On June 20 1942 he was captured at Tobruk and sent to a PoW camp at Chieti near the Adriatic Coast. He joined a group of tunnellers there and his job was to help dispose of the earth by concealing it in his trousers and dispersing it around the camp.
After the Italian Armistice, he and five comrades hid in the tunnel for 24 hours to evade the Germans who were planning to take the inmates north to Germany. For almost three weeks, he and two others walked south through the Abruzzi, concealed in barns and fed by intrepid peasant farmers. They were watching the last of the retreating Germans blow up a bridge over the River Biferno when they were apprehended by suspicious Canadian troops. For his successful escape he was appointed MBE.
Joe Allen
Gunner awarded an MM for laying communication lines under heavy shell fire in the Italian campaign
Although a gunner in 56 Heavy Regiment RA, which was heavily committed after the battle of Monte Cassino, Allen was described in the citation for his award as a "Driver". His duties in the battery included transporting signals-trained line layers between his regiment's forward observation posts (OPs) and its guns further back. The distances involved often required intermediary camps to be established, from which line parties could carry out maintenance and repair work. On September 11 1944 one party was ordered to lay a line from an OP in a remote location to a gun further back. Heavy shell fire had so churned up the route that the road was impassable to their truck and they had to set out on foot.
Joe Allen At this point, Allen – though not a signaller – donned his linesman's cap and set about laying a portion of the line through an area where he and the line party had only just been shelled. While he was at work, the area was again shelled, several times, but he continued to lay the line single-handedly until the shelling ceased, and the line party caught up with him.
Later the enemy again shelled the area, and the whole party was forced to dive for cover. As the artillery rounds got closer and closer, it appeared that the German gunners were using the line party's lorry as a range-finding target. Allen broke cover, scrambled to the vehicle, and drove it away, drawing the fire from his comrades.
"He never hesitated," his citation for an immediate MM recorded, "to go into areas which were being shelled in order to get a line repaired." The citation was signed by General (later Field Marshal) Alexander, Commander-in-Chief Allied Central Mediterranean Force.
Soldier, Conservative MP, sportsman and PPS to the disgraced John Profumo to whom he remained loyal
James Allason was a professional soldier, a member of the Far East strategic planning staff during the Second World War and, later, a Conservative MP. He was an old-fashioned politician, uncomfortable with the media and driven more by a sense of public duty than personal ambition. But he was perceptive of men and events.
As Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Profumo when the latter was Secretary of State for War, he was a close observer of the sequence of events leading up to Profumo’s resignation in 1963 after lying to the House of Commons, and reached conclusions substantionally different from those of his fellow parliamentarians and the public.
James Harry Allason was born in 1912 in South Kensington. His mother died in an accident at home when he was an infant. He was educated at Haileybury, Hertfordshire, then the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, claiming — with the flash of the self- assurance that seldom if ever deserted him — that he took the Woolwich rather than the Sandhurst examination “because it was more difficult”. His father, Walter, was a brigadiergeneral and his grandfather an admiral.
While serving in the Army in the 1930s Allason hunted and shot when on leave at the family’s country home in Chacombe, Northamptonshire; he skied in winter and raced his sports car at Brooklands in summer. Commissioned into the Royal Artillery on leaving Woolwich in 1932, five years later he transferred to the 3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards), who were serving at Sialkot in the Punjab and soon to exchange their horses for light tanks.
As British and Indian Army units in India prepared to go to war in Egypt’s Western Desert, the social and sporting life in the subcontinent continued — at least until the Japanese entered the conflict in December 1941. Shortly after that, Allason joined the Joint Planning Staff at GHQ in Delhi.
He, as a major and General Staff Officer Grade 2, and his colleagues drafted papers analysing the feasibility of ideas and drew up plans to defeat the seemingly invincible Japanese. On one occasion a yellow-faced young man visited the team, demanding to see the plans for driving the Japanese out of Burma. On the point of detaining him, Allason learnt he was an intelligence officer recovering from jaundice — Major (later Brigadier) Enoch Powell.
In early 1944 Allason arranged to accompany General Sir George Giffard, commander of 11th Army Group, on a visit to General Bill Slim’s 14th Army prior to an offensive into Arakan in Burma. Staying on after Giffard had left, he was wounded in the arm and evacuated to Calcutta.
A period on Lord Mountbatten’s planning staff in Kandy, Ceylon, was followed by return to England at the end of 1944. Despite strenuous efforts to see some action in the North-West Europe Campaign, he was assigned to another staff job in the War Office. A course at the Joint Services Staff College, to which he was able to contribute significantly from his own experience, led to yet another War Office staff appointment — this time in the discipline department.
This involved providing briefs for the Secretary of State on such issues as the sentencing of soldiers found guilty of murder and other serious offences. By then a lieutenant-colonel, Allason was appointed OBE for his services. He decided to leave the Army in 1953 with a view to entering politics. In the meantime, he moved house to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, with his wife and two young sons and enjoyed the London round of parties, the San Moritz ski slopes, summer in the Mediterranean and his house on the Isle of Wight.
Having secured a Conservative nomination he cut his political teeth in the 1955 general election for the safe Labour seat of Hackney Central, which he lost. His election as a councillor for Kensington in 1956 broadened his political understanding. Meanwhile he kept a sharp lookout for a Conservative seat in which the sitting MP was planning to stand down.
Eventually, he learnt that Lady Davidson, wife of the former party chairman Lord Davidson, would be vacating Hemel Hempstead. Over lunch with Davidson and already primed, he made a point of talking of “the Empire”, rather than “the British Commonwealth”. The impressed Davidson concluded the lunch with the verdict: “The seat’s yours.”
As an MP he concentrated on housing and local government and in 1970 began a four-year term as chairman of the Conservative backbench Housing Committee. He was an early advocate of selling off council houses, a policy which became a Conservative success after 1979.
Elected in 1959, he was appointed PPS to Profumo, the Minister for War, for which his military background and experience of the War Office made him well suited. Allason worked closely with Profumo and always felt he had been unfairly treated over the events leading to his resignation.
Profumo’s association with the call girl Christine Keeler drew attention from the press and quickly gathered pace when it became known that she also knew — to express the matter in the language of the day — Captain Eugene Ivanov, the assistant naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in whom MI5 had an interest as a possible defector.
When the matter became public through an unrelated criminal investigation in which Keeler appeared to be peripherally involved, Profumo made a statement to the Commons about his relationship with her that he was subsequently obliged to withdraw, and resign. Allason remained firmly of the opinion that, aside from an indiscreet relationship, Profumo had acted honourably throughout.
Boundary changes in 1970 changed Hemel Hempstead from a safe Tory seat into a marginal. Allason held on by 185 votes in the February 1974 general election but lost by 485 at the election in the following October.
After departure from Parliament he resumed his earlier pursuits. Until late in life he continued to shoot and sail and, as a former MP, represented Britain in the Anglo-Swiss parliamentary ski race held at Davos. He skied until his 90th year undeterred by deteriorating eyesight, although it occasionally alarmed others on the slopes.
He was active in his old constituency association and served on the Town and Country Planning Association Council for nine years, only resigning over its opposition to nuclear energy. A keen traveller, he visited cities with opera houses and art galleries.
His marriage in 1946 to the Irish actress Nuala Elveen was dissolved in 1974. He did not remarry. He is survived by his two sons, Julian, an author, and Rupert, also a Conservative MP — for Torbay (1987-1997) — and, as Nigel West, a writer on military history and espionage.
Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Allason, OBE, MP for Hemel Hempstead 1959-1974, was born on September 6, 1912. He died on June 16, 2011, aged 98
Pilot who became a Master Bomber in the Pathfinder Force for some of its heaviest assaults of the war
As a bomber pilot during the Second World War, Peter Clayton flew two tours of operations in Lancasters, first with 97 Squadron and then with 156 Squadron in the Pathfinder Force. Between October 1942 and January 1945 he flew a total of 84 operational sorties, mainly involved in the strategic air offensive against Germany at night, though during the period of the Normandy landings he also flew day attacks on targets over the Normandy battlefield and elsewhere in the tactical operational area.
A pilot highly regarded by his superiors for his resolve over the target as an aircraft captain, and for his skill as a Master Bomber in Pathfinder sorties, he was decorated with the DFC in 1943 and the DSO in 1945.
Peter Frederick Clayton was born in 1922 and educated at Haileybury, from which he joined the RAF in 1940. After pilot training in Florida, he was posted to 97 Squadron in autumn 1942. After a series of anti-submarine sweeps in October and November, the squadron switched to strategic bombing from its base at Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, and from February 1943 Clayton was involved in attacking some of a most heavily defended industrial targets in Germany, including Bremen, Stuttgart, Essen, Duisburg and Berlin. In April 1943 the squadron joined 8 Group, Bomber Command’s Pathfinder Force.
From then on it was involved in an intensive campaign of night raids, many of them over the Ruhr industrial heartland, but also ranging as far afield as Munich and Leipzig, with attacks on Italian cities, Turin, Milan and La Spezia.
On the night of August 17-18 Clayton and his squadron flew on the raid on the V2 manufacturing facility at Peenemunde on the Baltic, as part of a force of 596 bombers. The damage from the 1,800 tons of bombs dropped by this force attacking in three waves is estimated to have set back to the German rocket programme by at least two months. Clayton flew 48 sorties, in a tour of operations which lasted for more than 12 months, before being rested in November 1943.
After a spell as an instructor, by August 1944 he was back on operations with 156 Squadron in 8 Group, soon to become a PFF Master Bomber himself. His second sortie of this tour was an attack on German troops and vehicles in the Falaise area, but during much of the remainder of August and September the squadron’s efforts were directed at such German ports as Stettin, Bremen, Kiel and Emden, and on the French ports of Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais. In October the focus changed to the German hinterland with numerous attacks on the industrial Ruhr.
On the night of January 16-17, 1945 Clayton was detailed to be Master Bomber for one of Bomber Command’s heaviest assaults of the war, on the synthetic oil producing plant at Magdeburg. Clayton was praised for his accurate marking of the aiming point and his subsequent control over the vast Main Force of bombers, over Magdeburg, which resulted in huge damage to one of Germany’s shrinking sources of fuel. The citation for the immediate DSO awarded on that occasion recorded: “This raid is typical of the dogged determination, skill and tenacity with which this officer has acted in eleven Master and Deputy Master Bomber operations.” Clayton flew his last sortie on March 24, 1945, on that occasion arriving back at base with severe flak damage.
After the war he read a degree in electrical engineering at Cambridge, working thereafter for the engineering group Costains and BAT before founding his own business, Thames Flooring.He retired to Dorset, where he enjoyed his garden, DIY and sea fishing.
He married his first wife Sally in 1960 and they had a daughter and three sons, one of whom died in infancy. The marriage was dissolved and in 1981 he married his second wife, Jane. He is survived by her, by three children of his first marriage and by three stepchildren.
Squadron Leader Peter Clayton, DSO, DFC, wartime bomber pilot, was born on March 25, 1922. He died on May 3, 2011 aged 89
Head of the WRAC who played a significant role in the full integration of women in the British Army
From the moment she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a private aged 21, after leaving the LSE without taking a degree, it was clear that Anne Field’s strong suit was leadership. If she ever let up until she became the Head of her Corps, it can only have been during quiet moments in her beloved Lake District. After official retirement she continued to work for the better recognition of the place women had won in the Army. Yet she was always at ease with soldiers — one of the boys.
Born in Keswick, the daughter of Captain Harold and Annie Hodgson, she attended Keswick School and St George’s Harpenden before going to LSE. Commissioned in 1948 she applied for overseas service. Subsequently, she commanded 4th Independent Company WRAC in Singapore and Malaya from 1951 to 1953, the most dangerous years of the communist insurrection.
She attended the six-month course at the WRAC Staff College, Frimley Park, in 1953, and on graduation was posted to Staff Duties branch in the War Office. She married Captain Anthony Field in 1956. The marriage was dissolved in 1961.
Regimental and staff appointments in London, Catterick and Scotland, where she was Adjutant of 317 (Scottish) Battalion WRAC of the Teritorial Army, followed, before she went as a major to the WRAC training depot at Guildford as Chief Instructor in 1961.
In September 1963 she joined HQ Middle East Command in Aden as the staff officer responsible for the conditions, discipline and welfare of soldiers and their families in South Arabia. The spring of 1964 saw the outbreak of rebellion by the Radfan tribes of the Western Aden Protectorate and a brigade and supporting units were sent there to deal with it.
As staff officer responsible for the notification of casualties to the next of kin at home, she got herself up-country to see conditions for herself. Her straightforward way of questioning and no-nonsense attitude to roughing it were well remembered 40 years later when she became patron of the Aden Veterans’ Association.
Two appointments in the MoD preceded her advance to lieutenant-colonel to become Assistant Director WRAC in the Army of the Rhine. In 1971 she was appointment Commandant of the WRAC College at Camberley, in the rank of colonel.
The next three years projected her — and her increasingly confident personality — as an advocate for additional roles that WRAC officers could take on, relieving male officers for more dangerous work. The Northern Ireland emergency intensified during her tenure as college commandant, and she was quick to suggest new posts for women officers in the Province, some as hazardous as those undertaken by their male counterparts.
The strain of the Northern Ireland emergency on the Army’s manpower ceiling finally broke the taboo on the wider employment of women in “teeth arm” units on active service. It had long been standard practice for a proportion of members of the WRAC to specialise in communications, supply and transport, and wear the insignia of the appropriate corps. As this system became extended, it was decided to carry it to the conclusion of women joining the corps in which they wished to specialise from the outset. Anne Field promoted this concept and put in the groundwork during her tenure first as Assistant Director at HQ UK Land Forces and then as Director WRAC from 1977 to 1982.
Although another decade would pass before the WRAC was formally disbanded in 1992, much of the credit for initiating the changes to direct commissioning and “badging” was due to Field. In her honorary position as Deputy Controller Commandant to the Duchess of Kent — as Controller Commandant — from 1984 to 1992, she continued to contribute to the debate for this reform and served for a further two years as Deputy Colonel Commandant of the new Adjutant-General’s Corps, into which many WRAC women were absorbed, from 1992 to 1994.
She was appointed an Honorary ADC to the Queen in 1977 and CB in 1979. (A decade earlier she would have been appointed DBE as head of her service.) After leaving the Army in 1982 she devoted herself to the interests of the WRAC Association and the ATS and WRAC Benevolent Fund, serving as chairman of Council from 1991 to 1997. She was appointed CBE (Civil) in recognition of her continued service to past and present members of the ATS and WRAC in 1995.
She was a director of the London Regional Board of Lloyds Bank, 1982-91, a special commissioner of The Duke of York’s Royal Military School, Dover, 1989-2004, a member of the main grants committee of the Army Benevolent Fund, a Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman of the Spectacle Makers’ Company.
A woman of immense warmth and friendliness, despite a steely determination to bring about results she deemed necessary, she kept her friendships bright. Generals she had known since they were subalterns received, whether or not they welcomed it, the benefit of her advice and experience, but always delivered with a reassuring twinkle. She kept her finger on the Army’s pulse through living in London in retirement, but her holidays in the Lake District were sacrosanct.
Her younger brother predeceased her.
Brigadier Anne Field, CB, CBE, Director Women’s Royal Army Corps, 1977-82, was born on April 4, 1926. She died on June 25, 2011, aged 85.
