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
Commander David Hankinson
Former Naval officer who embraced Carnaby St and painted Princess Diana
Hankinson served at sea in seven destroyers, off Suez in 1956 and Cyprus (1955-58), and during the First Cod War off Iceland in 1959. He specialised in gunnery in 1958 and attended the Royal Naval Staff Course, Greenwich, in 1962.
In 1963 he was promoted captain of the destroyer Cambrian. During 18 months as part of the Far East Fleet, he steamed 63,000 miles. He took part in the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, and in January 1964 fired rockets and air bursts from his 4.5in guns over Dar es Salaam to frighten Tanganyikan soldiers who were in mutiny, while Royal Marine commandos landed to capture the mutineers’ barracks.
Air Commodore Peter Cribb
Master bomber who won two DSOs and made an unauthorised raid on Hitler’s Bavarian retreat
In July he was put in command of the newly-formed No 582 Squadron and flew 16 daylight sorties in support of the Normandy landings. On July 18 he was the deputy master bomber when more than 1,000 aircraft pulverised the German panzer divisions in front of Montgomery’s stalled army at Caen.
Cribb also controlled more than 700 bombers which attacked the V-1 sites before the bombing campaign resumed its efforts against major oil targets in Germany.
On October 3 he was master bomber for the attack on the sea walls of Walcheren Island. Coastal gun batteries dominated the approaches to the important port of Antwerp; the aim was to breach the walls and flood the island, most of which was reclaimed polder below sea level.
As the first to arrive at the head of 252 Lancasters, he orbited the target and directed eight separate waves of bombers, correcting the aiming point with flares and markers to widen the initial breach. The sea poured in, forcing the German defenders to abandon their carefully prepared positions. Cribb was the last to leave the target after a brilliantly controlled attack, which allowed Canadian ground forces to capture the island and open Antwerp to the Allies. Newspapers hailed the achievement with the headline “RAF sinks an island”.
Ralph Barker
Air gunner who flew perilous wartime missions and wrote authoritative books on aviation and cricket
After completing his training in 1941 Barker joined a Beaufort torpedo bomber squadron, flying from Scotland, but was soon posted to the Middle East with Nos 47 and 39 Squadrons. Flying from airfields on Malta and North African desert landing strips, it was the task of these squadrons to sink the Axis ships supplying Rommel's Panzers in the Western Desert.
Colonel John Kynaston
Officer who reconnoitred a minefield under heavy fire and carried on regardless when deafened by a bomb
During the Battle of El Alamein in October and November 1942, Kynaston, then a major, was serving with the 5th Regiment Royal Horse Artillery (5 RHA). On one occasion he carried out a most hazardous reconnaissance over a mined area under heavy shellfire in order to find the best position from which his regiment could give support to the 24th Armoured Brigade.
John Kynaston being decorated by General Montgomery On another, there was a determined Stuka raid on his regimental headquarters and a bomb fell a few feet from the slit trench in which Kynaston was taking cover. This burst an eardrum, which completely deafened him in one ear, but he carried on his duties as if nothing had happened. He was awarded an immediate MC .
Lord Middleton
Twice-decorated peer who devoted himself to soldiering, public service and country pursuits
Captain Michael Willoughby, as he then was, took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944 as second-in-command of a company whose commander was soon wounded. Willoughby took over, and in July, when the company came under intense fire while being relieved by a unit from another regiment in pitch darkness, he had to evacuate casualties and reorganise the operation under very difficult conditions.
He was awarded a Croix de Guerre, the citation paying tribute to his coolness and efficiency in a critical situation and to the courage and endurance that he had shown throughout the advance.
The battalion moved forward to enter Brussels in September and to cross the Rhine in March 1945. On April 11 Willoughby led his company in an attack near the village of Böen, south-west of Cloppenburg. Their objective was to clear the north bank of the River Hase, which was not thought to be strongly held.
When the attack was launched across open ground it came under fire from a garrison which was able to shoot at it from the front, flank and rear. Willoughby rallied his forward platoons, who were taking casualties, then went to his reserve platoon and helped them deal with the most threatening enemy positions.
As a result 40 members of the German 61st Parachute Regiment were killed or captured, and Willoughby was awarded an immediate MC.
Major General John Alison
American fighter ace who fought with the Chindits and pioneered US airborne special operations
A combat veteran with seven enemy aircraft to his credit, Alison was appointed at the end of 1943 to join his friend, Lt Col Philip Cochran, to form the 1st Air Commando Group, a secret and highly innovative flying unit.
Alison (centre) with pilots of No1 Air Commando in Burma Alison's composite wing of fighters, bombers, transports, gliders, and helicopters was assembled to support Major General Orde Wingate, the unorthodox British commander of the Chindits long-range penetration force, who planned to land a force of 9,000 men almost 200 miles behind Japanese lines in Burma.
Alison trained his air transport and glider-towing force in preparation for this mission, codenamed Operation Thursday, and the assault took place on the night of March 5 1944. Men and mules were carried in Waco gliders towed in pairs behind C-47 transport aircraft. Alison had only flown a glider on two previous occasions, and never at night, but was determined to participate in the landing of Wingate's force.
He piloted one of the gliders in the first wave, taking 15 men of the assault team. After casting off from the tug aircraft, he brought his glider down safely on the rough "Broadway" landing ground before grabbing his rifle and a sack of grenades and leaping out to join battle with the enemy.
After three weeks in the jungle he was recalled. To get back he flew a damaged C-47 transport aircraft from a jungle airstrip, despite never having flown the type before. On arriving over his destination airfield he had to ask for instructions on how to lower the undercarriage and landing flaps. For his services in support of Operation Thursday, King George VI awarded Alison the DSO.
Captain Geoffrey Brown
Artillery officer at Arnhem who swore a string of Anglo-Saxon oaths to avoid being cut down by friendly fire
In September 1944 Brown took part in Operation Market Garden with 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, Royal Artillery. He was in one of the first two gliders to reach the landing zone. These clipped one another as they descended and it was fortunate that there were no casualties.
Brown was one of the survey party and used his jeep to retrieve containers dropped by air supply. He recovered a container from a roof under enemy machine gunfire but was refused a medal for gallantry on the grounds that his unit had used up its allowance.
On another occasion, he was held up at a crossroads by a German military policeman while an enemy convoy crossed in front of him. The policeman then waved him across. Brown said afterwards that he and his comrades were saved by the similarity of the uniforms worn by airborne forces.
The fighting left Brown so exhausted that, when Allied survivors were withdrawn across the Rhine, he was asleep on some hay in a barn. Woken by German soldiers, he lay doggo until they left. After dark he emerged to find Germans all around him and was forced to hole up for another day.
The following night, he came across two other British soldiers in the same plight. One could not swim and they scoured the bank of the river until they found some wooden packaging.
They placed the non-swimmer on this, together with most of their kit, but a quarter of the way across, their raft began to sink and they were forced to abandon it and return to the German side, cold and sodden.
The non-swimmer begged them to leave him behind but they refused and, after stealing a recce boat, they approached the further bank.
They were in great danger of being shot by their own comrades but Brown solved the problem by shouting a string of oaths that he felt was beyond the scope of any German.
Rear-Admiral John Templeton-Cotill
Naval character who restored a fort, set up an auction room and was filmed for an on-board documentary
John Atterill Templeton-Cotill was born on June 4 1920, the son of a First World War tank officer, and educated at Canford School and New College, Oxford. "TC" as he was universally known, joined the RNVR in 1939 and served in the corvette Crocus in 1940-41. He showed early talent as a diplomat and linguist, and, after the French minesweeping sloop Chevreuil was seized by the Royal Navy on July 3 1940 in Portsmouth and transferred from the Vichy to the Free French Navy in September 1940, he served in her as British liaison officer.
Chevreuil was sent to the Pacific to secure French possessions for de Gaulle, and TC was on board when, in November 1940, en route to Tahiti, she reached Sydney, New South Wales.
There he contrived to join the staff of the American General "Sandy" Patch for the Guadalcanal Campaign, the first major attack by Allied forces against the Japanese in the Second World War. When Patch was sent to Europe to take command of the US Seventh Army, TC was lent to the American embassy in London to continue his liaison work.
Next he was flag lieutenant to the flag officer, Malta, Vice-Admiral Sir Louis "Turtle" Hamilton, but soon volunteered for the greater excitement of operations in motor torpedo-boats. In the winter of 1944-45 he served as first lieutenant of MTB 421, fighting in some minor actions in the Mediterranean.
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor
Writer and SOE hero whose combination of action and learning marked him as a latter-day Byron
On the outbreak of war Leigh Fermor first joined the Irish Guards but was then transferred to the Intelligence Corps due to his knowledge of the Balkans. He was initially attached as a liaison officer to the Greek forces fighting the Italians in Albania, then – having survived the fall of Crete in 1941 – was sent back to the island by SOE to command extremely hazardous guerrilla operations against the occupying Nazis.
For a year and a half Leigh Fermor, disguised as a Cretan shepherd (albeit one with a taste for waistcoats embroidered with black arabesques and scarlet silk linings) endured a perilous existence, living in freezing mountain caves while harassing German troops. Other dangers were less foreseeable. While checking his rifle Leigh Fermor accidentally shot a trusted guide who subsequently died of the wound.
His occasional bouts of leave were spent in Cairo, at Tara, the rowdy household presided over by a Polish countess, Sophie Tarnowska. It was on a steamy bathroom window in the house that Leigh Fermor and another of Tara's residents, Bill Stanley Moss, conceived a remarkable operation that they subsequently executed with great dash on Crete in April 1944.
Dressed as German police corporals, the pair stopped the car belonging to General Karl Kreipe, the island's commander, while he was returning one evening to his villa near Knossos. The chauffeur disposed of, Leigh Fermor donned the general's hat and, with Moss driving the car, they bluffed their way through the centre of Heraklion and a further 22 checkpoints. Kreipe, meanwhile, was hidden under the back seat and sat on by three hefty andartes, or Cretan partisans.
For three weeks the group evaded German search parties, finally marching the general over the top of Mount Ida, the mythical birthplace of Zeus. It was here that occurred one of the most celebrated incidents in the Leigh Fermor legend.
Gazing up at the snowy peak, Kreipe recited the first line of Horace's ode Ad Thaliarchum – "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte" (See how Soracte stands white with snow on high). Leigh Fermor immediately continued the poem to its end. The two men realised that they had "drunk at the same fountains" before the war, as Leigh Fermor put it, and things between them were very different from then on.
Kreipe was eventually taken off Crete by motorboat to Cairo. The exploit was later filmed (in the Alps) as Ill Met by Moonlight (1956), with Dirk Bogarde implausibly cast as Leigh Fermor, who was awarded the DSO for his part in the mission. Such was his standing thereafter on Crete that in local tellings of the deed Kreipe was heard to mutter while being abducted: "I am starting to wonder who is occupying this island – us or the British."
Battle of Britain pilot with the famous 249 Squadron which he later commanded in the defence of Malta
In a remarkably long wartime career as a combat pilot which involved him in the air defence of Britain in 1940 and Malta in 1941, service in North Africa in 1943 and command of a fighter station in the Far East theatre in 1944, John Beazley served during the Battle of Britain with 249 Squadron, the RAF’s top scoring fighter unit of the war.
It was also 249’s proud claim that it won Fighter Command’s only wartime Victoria Cross, that of Flight Lieutenant James Nicholson, who remained with his blazing aircraft until he had shot down a Messerschmitt 110 with which he was in combat, only baling out when he saw it go down in flames.
Beazley was himself shot down during the Battle of Britain, and was later badly wounded during an air battle over Essex. But he returned to the front line on both occasions, and later commanded 249 Squadron in Malta.
Hugh John Sherard Beazley was born the son of a judge in 1916, and educated at Cheltenham and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history. He joined the University air squadron in 1936 and learnt to fly with the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
When war came he was commissioned in the RAF and after training at Cranwell was posted to 249 Squadron which had been re-formed as a fighter squadron on May 16, 1940, less than a week after Germany’s Blitzkrieg had opened on the Western Front.
Flying in August from Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, where Nicholson won his VC, and in September based at North Weald in Essex, 249’s Hurricanes were in the thick of the action, often flying four sorties a day. On September 2 Beazley’s aircraft was hit by cannon fire while he was tackling enemy fighters over Rochester, and he was compelled to “hit the silk”, but parachuted safely to earth.
He was back in action within 48 hours, but on September 27 he was badly wounded in the foot when his aircraft was hit while he was attacking a Messerschmitt 110. He managed to nurse his Hurricane back to North Weald, but had to spend five months in hospital while his injuries healed. He was to suffer problems with his injury for the rest of his life.
He re-joined his squadron in March 1941, not long afterwards to embark with it in the carrier Ark Royal en route to Malta. On May 21 the squadron’s Hurricanes flew off the carrier for the three-hour flight to the beleaguered island. They all touched down safely, but their destination, Ta Qali airfield, was assailed by the Luftwaffe soon after they had landed, and 249 lost several aircraft on the ground to a strafing attack. At this stage the squadron was still flying its now obsolete Hurricane Is but in June it received some Mk IIs and was able to regain some advantage over the Axis attackers for most of the rest of the year, claiming the 1,000th aircraft to fall to Malta’s defences.
However, towards the end of the year, 249’s losses began to rise steeply and Beazley saw many of his comrades and friends killed or wounded. A fine leader, he was promoted to acting squadron leaderand given command of 249 in December 1941. He led it until February 1942 when he was rested from operations after ten months in action and 215 operational sorties, including combat victories over Ju88, Me109 and Me110, bringing his total claims to seven, with others shared.
After a period on Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder’s staff he was restless to get back to flying, and in December 1942 he converted to the twin-engined Beaufighter in the night fighter role. He was posted to 89 Squadron the Middle East where its Beaufighters were highly effective in night air defence and intruder sorties ranging as far as Malta and Sicily.
With German night fighters retreating northwards in October 1943 the squadron was sent to Ceylon to take part in night air operations in South East Asia, and in March 1944 Beazley was promoted to wing commander and appointed station commander of RAF Minneriya. He had by that time been awarded the DFC.
Towards the end of the war higher rank and further staff jobs beckoned, but Beazley wanted to keep flying, and opted for Transport Command where he flew Dakotas in Europe and in the Middle and Far East until his demobilisation in 1946.
After a period with the family shipping company he joined the Colonial Office and served for ten years in Nigeria where he became a Senior Resident. After Nigeria’s independence he qualified as a chartered accountant in 1960 and worked as finance director for the British Electric Traction Company until his retirement in 1981. Active in the Conservative Party in Hertfordshire, he served as a councillor and then chairman of Hoddesdon District Council and was chairman of the Broxbourne Conservative Association.
Beazley was also a trustee and treasurer of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust. As such he played an active role in helping to establish the Battle of Britain Memorial on the White Cliffs at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone.
He married, in 1947, Mary, daughter of Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings. He is survived by her and by three children.
Wing Commander John Beazley, DFC, wartime fighter pilot, was born on July 18, 1916. He died on June 13, 2011, aged 94
RAF navigator who helped to plan the bombing of German supply lines to prepare the way for D-Day
In the spring of 1944 Bomber Command under its redoubtable but stubborn leader, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, was ordered to divert a proportion of its energies from the strategic bombing of Germany, of which Harris was the architect, to attacking targets in northern France and Belgium — railways, bridges, tunnels, marshalling yards — whose destruction would materially expedite the forthcoming Allied invasion of German-occupied Europe.
Although Harris dug his heels in against what he was convinced was a misuse of his strategic bomber force, a trial raid against a railway centre at Trappes, south west of Paris, in early March resulted in such spectacular destruction and dislocation of rail traffic that it became evident that a sustained assault by Bomber Command would be capable of virtually paralysing the German capacity to move troops against whatever beach heads the Allies might establish before, and not after, the projected invasion. This was a vital discovery. In spite of Harris’s protests his best bomber squadrons were from then until June 6, 1944, and afterwards, employed on this momentous interdiction work.
Don Nelson, a Pathfinder Force navigator newly arrived at No 7 (Lancaster) Squadron, was involved in the precision navigation and marking of targets that was so vital to the success of this bombing policy. Over the next four months, flying with one of No 7’s flight commanders who also frequently acted as master bomber, he played an important role as the French railway system was methodically degraded as D-Day approached, causing trains to have to make lengthy diversions to reach their destinations. In addition Nelson and No 7 attacked stores and weapons depots causing chaos in the supply train to the German armies in France.
Remarkably, and again counter to Harris’s predictions, the losses were light. Of the 8,795 aircraft employed on these operations between March 6 and June 3 only 203 were lost. Such an attrition rate, 2.3 per cent, was less than half that sustained by squadrons who regularly undertook the area bombing of German cities.
After D-Day, Nelson and 7 Squadron were involved in attacking V1 sites in the Pas de Calais, and the E-boat bases at Le Havre, which might have constituted a serious threat to Allied supply lines. During these operations he was mentioned in dispatches and in September was awarded his first DFC.
In August, No 7 had resumed its place in Harris’s attacks on German cities. Nelson navigated for raids on the German naval base at Kiel, the inland ports of Bremen and Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Saarbrücken, his final trip, in October. He received a Bar to his DFC, having completed 70 operations.
Donald Kenneth Nelson had begun his war flying in the Western Desert. Born in London in 1920, he had joined the RAF in 1939, and was trained as a navigator in South Africa, before joining 37 Squadron, equipped with Wellingtons, in March 1942.
At this period, with the Royal Navy having suffered grievous losses to its aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, the Fleet Air Arm’s Albacore biplane torpedo bombers were being used as land-based aircraft to mark targets for the Desert Air Force’s Wellingtons at night. In one of the most successful of these co-operations, 37 Squadron located and bombed a huge Axis ammunition dump destroying ordnance vital to Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Nelson subsequently guided attacks on Axis shipping in the harbours of Tobruk and Benghazi. After completing 37 sorties with 37 Squadron he was posted back to the UK as an instructor.
When he was rested from operations with 7 Squadron in October 1944 it was not the end of his service flying career. In the last months of the war he was a navigator with Transport Command on the transpacific route to Australia and New Zealand.
He was demobbed in 1946 and worked as a technical consultant to such building trade companies as Pilkington and Goodlass Nerolac Paints. In retirement he was active in the Pathfinder Association and served as its president. He married in 1943 Edna Mather. She died in 1986 and he is survived by a son and daughter. A second son predeceased him.
Flight Lieutenant Don Nelson, DFC and Bar, wartime RAF navigator, was born on February 13, 1920. He died on March 20, 2011, aged 91
Vice-Admiral Sir John Martin
Naval officer who survived an eventful war to hold a series of senior and influential peacetime posts
As a midshipman in the battleship Queen Elizabeth and the destroyer Glowworm, John Martin witnessed the rescue of thousands of distressed refugees during the Spanish Civil War and the naval contribution to the quelling by the Army of both Arab and Jewish insurgency in the Palestine Mandate.
At the outbreak of war he was in the destroyer Pelican, based at Harwich and employed escorting East Coast convoys carrying coal to London. After his first night watch on the bridge he went below and changed into pyjamas and was awoken by a loud explosion from a ship in the convoy. Thereafter for the entire war he slept in his clothes with seaboots at the ready.
Pelican was bombed by German aircraft during the Norwegian campaign. A “hideous explosion” blew off her stern and inflicted many casualties, particularly among the 80 army communications personnel “who, being inexperienced, had come on deck to watch” and among Pelican’s after guns’ crews.
Martin was hit in the neck and leg. Ordered aft to find out what was happening, he and a sub-lieutenant RNVR, had to throw human body parts overboard, an experience which stayed with him all his life. Pelican stayed afloat and was towed to Shetland.
Back at Chatham, Martin was told to join the Sun Tug company’s Tug No 15 at Tilbury. With another officer, he collected nine lifeboats from adjacent merchantmen and towed them to Dunkirk. He had no real idea where to go but followed the track of destroyers passing at high speed.
Dunkirk was a mess of smoke and dive bombers. By dawn only two motorised lifeboats had returned to the tug, and these were towed back to Ramsgate. During a second trip the tug was overloaded with soldiers and barely stable. A third trip to try to tow off a grounded steamer was a failure. During it Martin, on board the steamer, was machinegunned from the air. Having embarked a RN commander, Sun Tug 15 set off on a fourth trip, only to meet a host of shipping and hear that the evacuation was complete. But, pressing on, the tug was able to help the last destroyer, packed with soldiers, to leave Dunkirk pier in a hurry.
Sun Tug 15 has a good claim to be the last vessel to leave Dunkirk, with a company of the Coldstream Guards whose perfect drill and discipline under such conditions were a credit to the brigade.
Martin slept for three days and rejoined Pelican, which, after one convoy, was incapacitated by an acoustic ground mine off Sheerness. The shock gave Martin an impacted ankle joint.
Repaired in the Middlesex Hospital, London, he was appointed second-in-command of the destroyer Antelope. An ancient ship in need of a refit, she was sent out with the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Hood to find and sink the Bismarck.
While Antelope was refuelling at Reykjavik, Bismarck was reported “not far off”. Antelope with two other vessels was ordered to intercept; perhaps luckily the violent weather prevented this, the destroyers searching instead for Hood’s survivors, of whom there were only three.
Having taken the six-month specialist navigator’s course, Martin was next appointed as the navigational expert to the 13th Minesweeping Flotilla. This, after work-up in the Channel, sailed as escorts to the large convoys supplying the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942.
After several supporting tasks as Allied forces moved east toward Tunis, the flotilla cleared a large minefield off Cape Bon, Tunisia. This took six weeks and, as usual with minesweeping, required meticulous navigation. In the subsequent assaults on Pantelleria, Sicily and Salerno the minesweepers generally went in ahead of other forces, often a perilous position. Martin was proud that while he was navigating the flotilla they never lost a ship; four were sunk subsequently. He was awarded the DSC.
After appointment to the minelayer Manxman, a fast passage to the British Pacific Fleet was followed by transfer to the cruiser Bermuda, a cruiser and carrier force flagship, which arrived at Leyte in the Philippines as the atom bomb concluded the war. Martin recalled how awful the British prisoners looked upon release in Formosa (now Taiwan), emaciated and yellow from forced labour in copper mines.
His postwar seafaring activities included navigating the battleship Nelson and the carrier Victorious and, from 1950, two rewarding years training cadets in the cruiser Devonshire.
After a tour on the staff college directing staff he was sent to Singapore on the joint services planning staff where the chief task of his small team was to write the papers that set up the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (Seato).
Having been second-in-command of the cruiser Superb in the Middle East, Martin was promoted to captain. His subsequent tours included the Admiralty Manpower Division and three years in the Caribbean, first as senior naval officer and after the amalgamation of all three services, commander of all British Forces in the Caribbean area. This role included the continuing military protection of Belize, episodes of disaster relief and providing security for President Kennedy and the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, at the Nassau meeting that determined the future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
On his return to the UK in 1963 Martin was given the plum job of captain of Dartmouth naval college, usually a stepping stone to flag rank. Having no private income, he initially demurred, complaining that he and his wife could not afford to take up the post. He was told that it was now time to modernise the social environment and to prune the costs of hospitality.
While Flag Officer Middle East and Commander, British Forces Persian Gulf, from 1966 to 1968 he was mentioned in dispatches for his part in managing the withdrawal from Aden in November 1967 and the consequent reorganisation of the British presence in the Middle East.
Martin always regarded his work as director-general of naval personal services and training in the MoD as perhaps his most valuable achievement. It anchored the principle of the “military salary” , particularly the naval “X factor” connoting family separation, into Whitehall thinking which thereafter recognised that in any calculations of equivalence with civilians, service people earned their pay under somewhat different circumstances.
Promoted vice-admiral in 1970, Martin was appointed to Norfolk, Virginia, as deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (Saclant), one of three major Nato commanders and always held by the US Atlantic fleet commander, the deputy’s post always being British. While much of his duties involved educating Americans about the idiosyncrasies of European Nato across the water, Martin found the lack of operational responsibility irritating.
He was appointed KCB on retirement in 1972. He took up the post of Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Guernsey for six years from 1974.
Although suffering from tachycardia, Martin played hockey and ran the mile for the Navy in his youth. A keen beagler, he was master of the Dartmouth pack. When, on a later courtesy visit, Martin was greeted by much barking, a polite cadet remarked: “Gosh, they recognise you, sir.”
He is survived by his wife, Rosemary, whom he married in 1942 and their two sons and two daughters.
Vice-Admiral Sir John Martin, KCB, DSC, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, 1970-72, was born on May 10, 1918. He died on May 31, 2011, aged 93
RAF flying doctor who piloted a jet bomber through the mushroom cloud during Britain’s atom bomb tests in Australia in 1953
One of the few RAF doctors to wear pilot’s wings, Geoffrey Dhenin had a distinguished war during which he won the George Medal for helping to rescue a member of the crew of a crashed Lancaster bomber. He subsequently took part in the monitoring of radiation from Britain’s nuclear and thermonuclear bomb tests in 1953 and 1957 respectively, on the first occasion flying a Canberra jet bomber through the mushroom cloud of an A-bomb detonated in the Woomera Desert in Australia. After a series of senior appointments in the 1960s and 1970s he was appointed Director-General of RAF Medical Services in 1974.
Geoffrey Howard Dhenin was born in 1918 in Bridgend, Glamorgan, and educated at Hereford Cathedral School and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read the natural sciences tripos (for medicine), completing his clinical training at Guy’s Hospital, London.
In 1943 he joined the RAF, and was serving as a medical officer with 116 (Bomber) Squadron at Kirmington, Lincolnshire, when in October that year one of its Lancasters, which had had to return from a raid with engine failure, crashed near the base as it attempted to land. The aircraft caught fire trapping the rear gunner in his crushed turret. After getting to the wreckage Dhenin administered medical aid to the injured man, and with an airman worked for 30 minutes to try to release him. At length a crane arrived to raise the wreckage and Dhenin was able to release the gunner who, thanks to his emergency medical aid, was one of only two members of the Lancaster’s crew to survive the crash. Dhenin’s George Medal was gazetted later that year.
Soon after D-Day Dhenin was posted to a mobile field unit in Normandy, and spent most of the remainder of the war involved in the evacuation of casualties from the North West Europe campaign. He was mentioned in dispatches in 1945.
Towards the end of the war he was briefly liaison officer to a French Air Force Spitfire Operational Training Unit at Ouston, Northumberland, where he met his future wife, Claude Andrée Evelyn Rabut, who held a French Air Force commission. They were married in 1946.
After the war he learnt to fly and went as a flying medical officer to the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough, later joining the Central Bomber Establishment in a similar capacity. After passing through the RAF Staff College, Manby, on whose staff he then served, he was sent to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell to prepare for the part he was to play in the forthcoming British atom bomb tests at Woomera. In October 1953 he volunteered to fly through the atomic cloud at Woomera to collect radioactive particles from it. With an RAF radiologist and a navigation expert, he piloted a Canberra jet bomber into the radioactive cloud six and a half minutes after the device had been detonated, and samples were collected in pods on the aircraft’s wings, which were subsequently dropped in a safe area. This was the first time that an aircraft had done this, and Dhenin was awarded the Air Force Cross for his accomplishment.
Having joined the nuclear club (Britain’s first A-bomb had been detonated in the frigate HMS Plym in the Montebello Islands in October 1952), the hydrogen bomb became an imperative. In 1957 Dhenin went out to Christmas Island, the base for the thermonuclear tests, Operation Grapple, in which the first three bombs, which did not actually achieve the desired megaton yield, were dropped from a Vickers Valiant bomber and detonated over Malden Island, 200 miles to the south of Christmas Island. Dhenin was awarded a Bar to his AFC in 1957 for his sampling work in association with the tests. Later H-bombs in the series were dropped over the southern tip of Christmas Island, when the megaton threshold was achieved.
After passing through the Staff College, Bracknell in 1959 Dhenin commanded Princess Mary’s RAF Hospital in Akrotiri, Cyprus, 1960-63; the RAF Hospital, Ely, 1963-66; and was Principal Medical Officer, Air Support Command, 1966-68.
From 1968 to 1970 he was Director of Health and Research, RAF, and then, from 1970 to 1971, Deputy Director-General of Medical Services before going to Strike Command as Principal Medical Officer for two years, before being appointed to the RAF’s top medical job in 1974. He was appointed KBE in 1975. He had been made a Fellow of the International Academy of Aerospace Medicine in 1972. In retirement from the RAF after 1978, he was for a year adviser to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. He was editor of the Textbook of Aviation Medicine in 1978.
In retirement he continued to pursue his favourite sports: golf (captain of Wentworth Golf Club 1981); skiing (well into his eighties) and scuba diving (formerly president of the RAF’s Sub-Aqua Association).
His wife Evelyn died in 1996. In 2002 he married Syvia Howard. She and a son and two daughters of his first marriage survive him. A second son of his first marriage predeceased him.
Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Dhenin, KBE, AFC and Bar, GM, Director-General Medical Services RAF, 1974-78, was born on April 2, 1918. He died on May 6, 2011, aged 93
Soldier and champion rifle shot who was awarded a Military Cross for leading daring raids against guerrillas in Sarawak in the 1960s
Dedicated to his profession, a champion rifle shot, boxer, cricketer and squash player, Peter Welsh was habitually free with his opinion, not least when addressing his military superiors. He avoided censure through his reputation for being proved right and the certainty that he spoke in the general interest — not his own. He was essentially a regimental officer and his soldiers respected his judgment and personal example on operations.
His leadership was well demonstrated during Indonesia’s “confrontation” with Malaysia in the 1960s, when he commanded a rifle company of 2nd Green Jackets (King’s Royal Rifle Corps) contesting guerrilla border incursions in Sarawak.
During the period May to September 1965 he led a series of fighting patrols in the frontier region, some requiring the crossing of an 80-yards-wide river with a six-knot current in order to come to grips with an enemy well trained in infiltration tactics and familiar with the terrain.
His aggressive and thoroughly planned operations achieved the surprise necessary to inflict a significant number of casualties on a wily enemy and led to the complete domination of the frontier in his company sector. His professionalism and personal courage were recognised by the award of the Military Cross, the citation stressing that he did not lose a man or a weapon in any of his operations, despite his determination to close with the enemy at every opportunity.
Peter Miles Welsh was the only son of Brigadier W. M .M O’D Welsh. He was educated at Winchester and RMA Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (60th Rifles) in 1951. He served with 2nd Battalion KRRC in Germany and in England and was an instructor at the Rifle Regiments’ training Depot in Winchester.
As a junior officer he developed a formidable reputation as an individual rifle shot and team leader. At Bisley he twice won the Henry Whitehead Cup, also the Army Hundred Cup and the Silver Jewel twice. He represented the Army six times in the United Services Cup and, while serving at the Rifle Depot, trained the only Depot team to beat the regular and Territorial Army battalions in the KRRC Cup. He represented the Army at squash and boxed heavyweight in the 2nd KRRC team that won the Army of the Rhine Championships in 1954.
From 1958 to 1960 he served as Adjutant of the Kenya Regiment, a Territorial Army unit linked to the 60th Rifles and manned by settlers. He did not allow Kenya attractions to divert his attention from the Staff College entrance examination, which he passed to attend in 1961-62 before becoming Chief of Staff of 129 Brigade of the Territorial Army.
Following a markedly successful tour of duty as a company commander in Borneo, he went to the Joint Services Staff College and in 1968 returned to Camberley as an instructor. This did not strike everyone as his ideal métier, but his active service experience and calm, common-sense approach proved invaluable.
He took over command of 2nd Royal Green Jackets, as the 60th Rifles had by then become, in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, in 1971. The battalion was well established on an 18-month tour of duty under an experienced CO and familiar with Londonderry’s sectarian susceptibilities. Welsh was consequently surprised when orders given for handling the civil rights march on January 30, 1972 — that became known as “Bloody Sunday” — allocated his battalion a reserve role with only one company on the barricades confining the route of the march.
Giving evidence to the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday in January 2003, Welsh said he had called the commander of the brigade responsible for security in Londonderry — Brigadier Patrick MacLellan — to request a more active role for his battalion as his men knew the city so well and advised against using 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment “on the day” due to its reputation for toughness. No change was made but Lord Saville’s Report singled out the Royal Green Jackets company on Barrier 14 (on the march route) for praise for the restraint and proportionality it used in dealing with intense rioting.
Welsh was appointed OBE in 1973 for his services in command of his battalion and promoted to command the 5th Air-portable Brigade in Tidworth in 1974. This was followed by the 1976 course at the Royal College of Defence Studies and two staff appointments as a brigadier before promotion to major-general in 1983 to become President of the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury, an appointment to which he was well suited for his shrewd judge of character.
In 1974 he married June McCausland, née Macadam, widow of Captain Marcus McCausland of the Ulster Defence Regiment, who had been murdered by the Official IRA in March 1972. She survives him along with two stepsons and one stepdaughter.
Major-General P. M. Welsh, OBE, MC, was born on December 23, 1930. He died on April 17, 2011, aged 80
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.