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Äàòà 15.07.2011 14:45:45
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Major-General Sir Roy Redgrave

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3084813.ece

Soldier who won the MC saving one of his men and was later Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong

It would be pointless to pretend other than that Roy Redgrave could give a startling impression on first acquaintance. His relationship to the Redgrave acting family — Sir Michael was his father’s half-brother — might lead one to expect a certain theatrical air, but he was distinctly mannered in stance and speech, especially speech. Those who thought he might be joking discovered he spoke in no other way and there was more than a touch of steel about him.

He won his Military Cross in most honourable circumstances — saving one of his men from death under fire. In the closing days of the war in Europe the 1st Household Cavalry Regiment, in which he was an armoured car troop commander, was providing part of the reconnaissance screen for the Guards Armoured Division during the advance from Bremen to the old Hanseatic port of Stade on the Elbe Estuary.

His troop was ordered to pause on the outskirts of a village until another troop caught up to allow the advance to continue. Redgrave climbed out and was using a rear wheel for a purpose for which rear wheels are sometimes used when two Panzerfaust rockets hit the car. From the ditch, he saw his second car reversing at speed into the village and his own on fire with the head of the radio operator moving in the turret. Despite some well-aimed bursts of Spandau fire, he climbed back on to the burning vehicle, got hold of the operator under his armpits and dragged him out on to the engine cover where Redgrave was hit in the leg. The pair rolled off the car into the ditch, from where he established that the driver of the car was dead and the radio operator had lost a leg.

After making the wounded man as comfortable as he could, Redgrave crawled back to the village via the ditch, brought out a half-track to recover the casualty, withdrew the rest of his troop under vigorous enemy fire and only then reported to the regimental aid post to have his wound dressed.

Roy Michael Frederick Redgrave was the son of Robin Roy Redgrave and his wife Micheline Capsa. He was born in the Athénée Palace Hotel, Bucharest, where his mother — the daughter of a Romanian general — checked in with just minutes to spare before her confinement. His early boyhood was spent at the Capsa country home at Doftana, some 60 miles north of the capital, where his father owned a company carrying out contract drilling for oil companies in Romania.

He was educated at Sherborne and enlisted in the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) in 1943 as a trooper. He volunteered in order to get into the war before it was over without any thought of becoming a professional soldier. Indeed, after the incident in which his armoured car was incinerated he characteristically remarked: “I had my whiff of war and did not ever want to smell it again.” But he found he liked the life, served in postwar Germany with the Royal Horse Guards patrolling the demarcation line between the British and Soviet zones of occupied Germany and became interested in the gathering of intelligence.

It is unlikely that after attending the Canadian Staff College course at Kingston, Ontario, Redgrave’s card was marked to suggest he might one day become a general. He was certainly enterprising but his refreshing disregard for the concerns of higher authority seemed likely to become a stumbling block. But his uninhibited approach and undoubted charm came to his aid as he advanced up the military tree at a brisk pace. He commanded a squadron of The Blues in Cyprus during the Eoka terrorist campaign and was mentioned in dispatches, served as the military assistant to the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commanded the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in London all without serious mishap. It was while commanding the Mounted Regiment that he acquired the nickname “Colonel Daffodil” due, so he recounted in his lighthearted autobiography Balkan Blue published in 2000, to the insistence of his wife’s miniature Pekinese named Daffodil preceding him on barrack inspection.

The post of Commander RAC of the 3rd Division in the rank of brigadier provided fresh opportunity to display his talent for staged productions. He revived the Tidworth Tattoo, Wiltshire, attracting huge crowds, and the Tidworth three-day event. His concern that the Army should maintain close touch with the local community and its interests was further demonstrated when, as commander of the Royal Armoured Corps training centre in Bovington, Dorset, he arranged for footpaths across the ranges — closed for half a century — to be opened to the public. His final two appointments in the Army were both exceptionally high profile and regarded as being among the plums of major-generals’ commands: Berlin and Hong Kong. In fact he was well suited to the former appointment as he spoke fluent French, German and Russian. News of his appointment was greeted by the Berlin press with a front-page photograph of him in uniform alongside one of his half-cousin Vanessa Redgrave posing naked — from the film Blow-Up. He took this in his stride and, in a Berlin then still divided by the hated wall and with tenuous lines of communication through East Germany to the outside world, proved a commandant well liked and respected by the Allied garrison and population alike. When the chimney of his Berlin house — the Villa Lemm — caught fire he put it out by climbing on the roof. The Berlin press gave the incident front-page coverage illustrated by a photograph of him together with another of a topless young lady with no relevance to him or to the incident.

He was the first Commander of British Forces Hong Kong in recent times below the rank of lieutenantgeneral and not already knighted. This called for some aplomb in a highly prosperous community very conscious of style and position. No one could say that Redgrave lacked self-confidence or a certain style. He may have been rather different from what Hong Kong had grown used to in its local general but his appointment as KBE on giving up the job was widely welcomed.

In retirement he threw himself into a variety of work and travel. He was Grand Master of the Knights Templar for a time; he was chairman of the Hammersmith & Fulham Health Authority and the Charing Cross Hospital special trustees. He travelled to China, Tibet and Greenland and, in 1999, he and his surviving sister returned to their childhood home at Doftana to find it a dilapidated summer home for children but both recaptured the magic of their childhood in the Carpathians.

He married Valerie, daughter of Major Arthur Wellesley, in 1953, died last year. He is survived by two sons.

Major-General Sir Roy Redgrave, KBE, MC, Commander British Forces Hong Kong 1978-80, was born on September 16, 1925. He died on July 3, 2011, aged 85

Vice-Admiral Sir David Loram

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3093186.ece

Veteran of Arctic convoys who later commanded frigates and was deputy Nato commander in the Atlantic

As a junior officer David Loram spent most of his war in the waters north of Iceland, escorting merchantmen to Murmansk with vital war materials for the Red Army. On this most lethal of convoy routes, the many losses inflicted by German warships, submarines and aircraft were suffered under the fearsome gales and icing of winter or the complete lack of concealing darkness in summer.

While a midshipman in the cruiser Sheffield Loram experienced a hard-fought convoy to Malta before his ship was transferred to Scapa Flow to escort Convoy PQ5 which arrived unharmed at Murmansk on December 13, 1941. Sheffield subsequently hit a mine and while she was under repair Loram was transferred to the destroyer Foresight.

Foresight’s first convoy to the Kola Inlet was uneventful, but the return became notorious. The cruiser Edinburgh, carrying five tons of Russian gold, was torpedoed by a U-boat. Under appalling conditions of icing and snow squalls, Foresight and her sister ship Forrester attempted to tow the stricken cruiser back to Murmansk. At dawn on May 2, 1942, they were attacked by three large German destroyers. A salvo from Edinburgh immobilised one which was abandoned; the other two inflicted grave damage on both British destroyers. Forrester lost her captain when the bridge was wiped out. At one point both were stopped and on fire. Loram recalled stepping inadvertently on the ship’s badly wounded second-in-command, who said: “Get off my legs, Mid, and get on with the battle.” He died two hours later.

Foresight was ordered to sink the abandoned Edinburgh. Having unfrozen his last remaining torpedo with a steam hose, Loram fired it and had the presence of mind to take a photograph of the impact.

Returning to the Sheffield, Loram took part in the Battle of the Barents Sea against German heavy cruisers Lützow and Hipper, the Allied invasion of North Africa and a further six Russian convoys, during one of which rough seas ripped off the top of an armoured six-inch gun turret. While navigator of the destroyer Zealous, he concluded his Arctic experiences with another fiercely opposed convoy, ending his war with the cheerfully alcoholic “liberation” of Copenhagen.

As a young man Loram distinguished himself as Chief Cadet Captain at Dartmouth, captain of cricket and a hockey player at UK club level. He was a skilled performer on the Cresta Run, for five years a member, manager and captain of the navy’s team.

In later life when occupying senior positions, Loram earned a welldeserved reputation as a difficult man to satisfy, but his long and significant career as a courtier argues a personality able to mix with all estates and kinds of men and women as well as a remarkable efficiency — at that level nothing must go wrong. Volunteers for naval aides-de-camp were called for by the Admiralty in early 1946 and Loram was selected to serve the celebrated hero of two world wars, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, whose gallantry is attested by his Victoria Cross and four DSOs and who was to become the Governor-General of New Zealand.

After a happy two years in New Zealand, Loram returned in early 1949 to specialise in signal communications. He was appointed as flotilla signals officer to the destroyer Chequers in Malta, the second-in-command of which was Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, whom Loram was asked to accompany on an unofficial visit to Damascus.

In 1952 he returned briefly to the signals school at Portsmouth. Recently promoted, he was appointed to the naval college at Dartmouth and while eating his breakfast opened a thin blue envelope from the Naval Secretary, a personage not in the habit of writing to young lieutenant-commanders. This was to tell him that he had been short-listed to become the first service equerry to the Queen. Royal equerries were habitually drawn from the aristocracy and families close to the monarch until the Queen decided to break with this tradition. In due course Lieutenant-Commander Loram found himself aboard the newly commissioned Royal Yacht Britannia, accompanying the Queen Mother and the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne on the maiden voyage to the Mediterranean and visits to Malta and Tobruk.

Royal duties at Windsor, Buckingham Palace, Sandringham, Balmoral and during state visits occupied the next two years. During time not “in waiting” Loram qualified as a helicopter pilot. He was appointed LVO.

Promoted to commander, Loram was appointed to captain the frigate Loch Fada which was one of three patrolling the Persian Gulf in a role familiar to many naval people, keeping the peace among the Trucial States.

This was followed in 1958 by his marriage to Fiona Beloe and a job on the staff of the Joint Services Staff College at Latimer. In 1961 he was appointed executive officer of the Far East Fleet flagship, the cruiser Belfast based at Singapore, circumnavigating the globe on return.

Back in England, Loram was promoted to captain and appointed naval attaché in Paris, requiring a crash course in French, which he never really mastered. There followed “the only appointment in my long career where I was less than happy” — command of the frigate Arethusa and the 6th destroyer squadron. The commission began badly: the work-up under the Flag Officer Sea Training was a disaster with a number of unhappy events including firing two 4.5-inch shells into Dorset farmland. Things improved with the Mediterranean deployment but for Loram it was a “disappointing command”.

As Director of Naval Operations and Trade in the MoD from 1969, Loram provided operational advice to government departments and ministers on the employment of the Fleet. His final sea command was the new guided missile destroyer Antrim which performed well in a series of Nato and national exercises as well as representing the RN at the 80th birthday celebrations of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, attended by Princess Anne.

Promoted to rear-admiral, Loram was appointed Flag Officer Malta and commander of all British forces in Malta. An activity of interest was the clearance of the Suez Canal after the October 1973 conflict between Egypt and Israel. His next tour in the rank of vice-admiral was commandant of the Latimer staff college followed by the important Nato post of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, based in Norfolk, Virginia. During his tenure, he was responsible under the energetic direction of Nato’s Secretary General, Dr Joseph Luns, for breathing life into moribund Nato plans for the rapid reinforcement of Europe, this requiring much air travel.

He was appointed KCB in 1979 and retired in 1980, taking up the part-time appointment of Gentleman Usher to the Queen in 1982 until 1994 when he was appointed CVO, then Extra Gentleman Usher until his death.

His two army officer brothers were killed in the war. His first marriage, to Fiona Beloe, was dissolved in 1981. His second marriage, to Diana Keigwin, was dissolved in 1990. He married in 1996 Sara Stead-Ellis, and is survived by her and the three sons of his first marriage.

Vice-Admiral Sir David Loram, KCB, CVO, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, 1978-80, was born on July 24, 1924. He died on June 30, 2011, aged 86


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Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (15.07.2011 14:45:45)
Äàòà 19.07.2011 12:45:50

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Charles Walker, GC
Sailor who, in 1942, dived into a burning sea to pull a drowning man to safety


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8646121/Charles-Walker-GC.html

Vice-Admiral Sir John Martin
Naval officer who survived his ship being thrice blown up and held important appointments after the war


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8643949/Vice-Admiral-Sir-John-Martin.html

Commander David Edwards
Naval officer who took an axe to help free a French convoy trapped in the mine-strewn mouth of the Seine


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8641273/Commander-David-Edwards.html

Juan María Bordaberry

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3097857.ece

President of Uruguay in the 1970s who abandoned democracy for military rule and presided over social division and ‘disappearances’

Juan María Bordaberry was the elected civilian President of Uruguay when, in 1973, he ushered in a period of harsh military rule by closing down Congress, banning political parties and ruling by decree, with the aid of a so-called national security council.

The generals soon tired of using him as a frontman, and in 1976 they dispensed with him altogether. Over the next nine years of de facto government hundreds of thousands of Uruguayans were forced to leave their country, which had once been known for its relaxed atmosphere, two-party politics and generous welfare state. Anybody suspected of left-wing sympathies was barred from employment in the public sector — Uruguay’s biggest employer — and there were also wholesale arrests and “disappearances”.

The background to this crackdown was a prolonged economic crisis and an increasingly violent urban guerrilla campaign led by a group of mainly middle-class activists calling themselves the Tupamaros — named after an indigenous rebel against Spanish imperial rule in 18th-century Peru.

Ironically, Uruguay had very few indigenous inhabitants of its own, and the Tupamaros had effectively been crushed by the security forces by the time that Bordaberry decided to do without the trappings of democratic government. Most of the Tupamaro leaders were either killed or spent years in prison, including the current President of Uruguay, José Mujica.

Bordaberry was eventually called to account for his actions, but it took a long time. In 2010 he was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for his involvement in human rights abuses and for violating the Constitution. He was allowed to serve the sentence at home because of his advanced age, and he lasted little more than a year.

By keeping a low profile Bordaberry had managed to avoid retribution entirely until 2003, under the umbrella of an amnesty law passed by the civilian Government that finally replaced the military regime in 1985. Although the number of people killed or “disappeared” in the military repression was relatively small — probably fewer than 200 — and was dwarfed by the bloodletting in neighbouring Argentina at around the same time, the scars left on a society of fewer than four million people were deep. The politicians decided that the best way forward was to draw a line under past divisions and hope for reconciliation through the work of a peace commission.

It did not work. Demands for a settling of scores soon bubbled back to the surface again, led by relatives of victims of the military regime, and became irresistible after a left-wing coalition, known as the Broad Front, was elected in 2005. Bordaberry was eventually implicated in a number of killings that were deemed to fall outside the scope of the amnesty law. He was found guilty of complicity in the deaths of four opponents who had taken refuge in Argentina: two politicians, Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, and two Tupamaro leaders, Rosario Barredo and William Whitelaw. The politicians were seized from their homes in Buenos Aires in 1976, in what human rights campaigners said was part of Operation Condor, a secret pact between South America’s military dictatorships to eliminate political opponents of like-minded regimes who fell into their hands.

Juan María Bordaberry Arocena was born in Montevideo into a wealthy family of cattle ranchers in 1928. He joined the conservative National (also known as the Blanco or White) Party, and was elected to the Senate in 1962. He later switched to the rival Colorado (Red) Party, and was appointed Agriculture Minister in 1969, securing the party’s presidential nomination two years later. He was the handpicked successor of the outgoing President, Jorge Pacheco Areco, who in 1968 had prepared the way for future excesses on both sides by declaring a state of emergency, arresting opponents and dissolving protest demonstrations. Bordaberry’s room for manoeuvre was very limited from the outset, and by 1973 he realised that the only way he could survive politically was by putting himself at the head of the political crackdown that the generals were demanding. On June 27 he ordered the army to surround the Congress building with tanks and suspended the individual guarantees contained in the country’s liberal constitution — thereby giving the security forces carte blanche to hunt down alleged subversives.

Uruguay remains deeply divided over the legacy of the era inaugurated by Bordaberry’s “self-coup”. Earlier this year a vote in Congress to overturn the amnesty for military personnel failed by a single vote.

Juan María Bordaberry Arocena, President of Uruguay 1971-76, was born on June 17, 1928. He died on July 17, 2011, aged 83


Al Schwimmer

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3097856.ece

Arms supplier of extraordinary cunning who delivered war planes to Israel just in time for the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948

Al Schwimmer smuggled planes to arm the air force in Isreal during the earliest days of the nation’s existence and later founded the country’s largest industrial complex to ensure that it would never be left short of air power in future conflicts. He also engaged in numerous acts of clandestine diplomacy on behalf of Israel.

Born to a Jewish family in 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Adolph “Al” Schwimmer showed an early passion for aircraft. He became a flight engineer on cross-American services during the 1930s and joined US Air Transport during the Second World War.

Meeting concentration camp survivors ignited his dormant Jewish identity and converted him to Zionism. In late 1947 Teddy Kollek, head of illegal immigration operations for Haganah, the Jewish defence organisation that was to form the core of the country’s security forces, asked Schwimmer for help in providing munitions.

The United States owned the world’s largest war surplus arsenal yet banned all military sales to the Middle East, so Schwimmer set up a bogus company in Hollywood to bolster his claim that he needed planes for a war film. Through this ruse he bought three Constellations and 15 C46 transport planes. The FBI impounded the Constellations and Schwimmer stayed at different locations to evade capture while the C46s flew on to Palestine, taking circuitous routes to reach their destination.

Together with fellow Jewish volunteers and wartime contacts, Schwimmer created Service Airways, a charter company operating from Panama. Service “leased” planes to Lapsa, another Schwimmer creation, which in time became Panama’s national airline.

Next he tried to buy 25 surplus Mustang fighters in Mexico, but the Haganah preferred Operation Balak, a plan to airlift munitions from Czechoslovakia. Schwimmer went to Zatec airfield, outside Prague, where he disassembled and loaded armed Czech Avia 199 fighter aircraft on to his carriers. These then flew via Corsica to an Israel that five Arab national armies attacked hours after it declared independence on May 14, 1948.

Schwimmer’s transports brought sustenance to isolated communities and army units. He also recruited British, American and South African pilots for the Israeli air force, which was born on May 28.

The Haganah’s aerial division lacked warplanes, whereas the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces were well-stocked, mainly with Spitfires. Schwimmer brought 25 Avias to Israel and also acquired three B17 Flying Fortresses. By the autumn Israel enjoyed air superiority over its territory.

Schwimmer returned to America and in February 1950 he was fined $10,000 and deprived of his voting rights for selling arms to Israel. The FBI further accused him of stealing from US Navy ordnance dumps and giving US radar devices to the Czech Army.

In 1951 David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, visited Schwimmer in California and asked him to launch an aerospace industry in Israel. Helped by his close friend, the director-general of the Defence Ministry, Shimon Peres, Schwimmer launched Bedek in 1953. As Israel Aerospace Industries, it became Israel’s largest employer, supplying the national carrier El Al and advancing from overhauling planes to constructing new ones.

In 1960 Schwimmer unveiled the Tzukit (Swallow) based on the French Fouga Magister light jet-fighter. After France cancelled arms sales to Israel during the 1967 war, Mossad agents persuaded a Swiss-German engineer to pass on blueprints for the coveted Mirage IIIC. Schwimmer used these to create the home-grown Nesher (Vulture) fighter in 1969 and the Kfir (Lion cub) in 1975.

He participated in numerous clandestine missions, including Israel’s controversial sale of US missiles to Iran in the 1980s, and an outlandish plan to set up a vast Saudi-funded Israeli-provisioned arms cache and mercenary base in Sudan from which to attack Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

In his eighties Schwimmer headed a lobby to guarantee equality to all branches of Judaism. He wanted Israel to have a proper constitution and harness the skills of Russian immigrants. At a Californian fundraiser he confessed that Israeli intolerance might cause “relationships with the Diaspora to wither away”.

He is survived by his wife Rina and by their son and daughter

Al Schwimmer, arms purchaser and aerospace tycoon, was born on June 10, 1917. He died on June 10, 2011, aged 94


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Ê Chestnut (19.07.2011 12:45:50)
Äàòà 20.07.2011 12:55:10

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General Magnus Malan
General Magnus Malan, who died on Monday aged 81, led the armed forces of apartheid South Africa and later became the first former minister to be put on trial on charges of committing atrocities during the period of white minority rule.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8648347/General-Magnus-Malan.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3099042.ece

Abrasive South African Defence Minister who acted ruthlessly against the enemies and critics of apartheid

After a career in the South African Army General Magnus Malan went into politics at the top — on retirement from the South Africa Defence Force (SADF) in 1980 he was appointed Minister of Defence by President P. W. Botha. He became National Party MP for Modderfontein in 1981.

In December 1986 he became a deputy chairman of the party in the Transvaal. He is remembered for his conviction of the need for a total national strategy and “total onslaught” to deal with the forces of “communism” (in which he included most legitimate protest against apartheid).

Malan remained at Defence, despite two heart bypass operations until President F. W. de Klerk removed him in August 1991, by which time his reactionary views were becoming incompatible with the changing temper of the times. He moved to Water Affairs and Forestry, where he remained until he retired from active politics at the end of January 1993.

Magnus André de Merindol Malan was born at Kimberley in 1930 and attended the Afrikaans Boys’ High School and Danie Craven Physical Education Brigade, Kimberley. Joining the army as a cadet officer, he took a BSc in military science at the University of Pretoria.

His first senior appointment was as officer commanding South-West Africa Command 1966-68; there followed spells in command of the South African Military Academy, 1968-72, and of the Western Province, 1972-73, before he became chief of the South African Army in 1973 and of the South African Defence Force from 1976.

With his abrasive style, Malan was not at home in politics, or happy with public participation in public affairs, He believed South Africa was at war and that the end justified the means. He was convinced that for South Africa “one man, one vote, in a unitary state” would be a disaster.

He misunderstood the politics of protest and said of African unrest: “The revolution was basically about getting a roof over your head, having food to eat, education for your children, having a job and medical services. That was the crux of the whole thing.” After the 1986 State of Emergency had been declared he said democracy was not a relevant factor for blacks, among whom, he said, there was only limited interest in political participation.

Malan and P. W. Botha collaborated on the burgeoning security apparatus that fortified the State in the 1980s, part of which was a military assassination squad, chillingly known as the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), which was used to quell unrest in the black townships. He later claimed to have known nothing of the bureau and its covert operations until November 1989.

In February 1990 there was a snap debate on the CCB. Malan acknowledged its existence but said he had not ordered any killings of opponents of the Government. There was pressure from the ANC for Malan to resign, and in October 1990 Archbishop Desmond Tutu called from the pulpit for his dismissal: “The new South Africa cannot afford yesterday’s men with dubious morals and yesterday’s attitudes.”

Internationally Malan never had any scruples about defending South Africa against “total onslaught”, as he saw it, fearing that the Soviet Union would establish itself in Angola, and use it as a base for forays into the whole continent. He admitted that South Africa was supporting Jonas Savimbi and his Unita movement (as other Western powers had done) which South Africa and the West in general saw as a potent anti-communist force. In Namibia he saw Swapo as communist-inspired.

In 1988 Malan and “Pik” Botha (the South African Foreign Minister) had a narrow escape. They were due to fly to New York, in connection with pre-independence talks for Namibia, and changed flights only hours before they would have caught PanAm Flight 103 (which was brought down over Lockerbie).

Though the military was not represented in the long negotiations with the ANC, Malan interfered in them, for example by saying that there could be no question of a merger between the SADF and Umkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC’s military wing). Though useful to the Government as a safety valve, he could not really get used to the idea of negotiating with the recent enemy, and when in August troops were moved into the townships he attacked left-wing radicals for their onslaught on the SADF.

After Malan’s retirement from active politics in November 1995 he was arrested, with ten other senior police and military officers, charged with having been responsible for the murder by an Inkatha hit squad (set up by order of the State Security Council and known as Caprivi 200) of 13 people at kwaMakhuta, south of Durban, on January 21, 1987, and of conspiring to kill anti-apartheid activists. After a six-month trial he and the other defendants were aquitted on all counts The acquittal led to much criticism of South Africa’s judicial system, and Tutu, as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Council (TRC), stated that it offered a better way of uncovering the truth about the past. Malan had already said that he would not appear before the TRC, but in April 1997 his position changed and he offered to testify, though he insisted that he had never given orders for unlawful activities. Subpoenaed by the TRC in December 1997 regarding cross-border incursions into Mozambique in support of the Renamo right-wing rebels, in October 1998 he was found accountable, as a member of the State Security Council, for the State’s violations of human rights.

Malan married in 1962 Margrietha van der Walt. She survives him with a daughter and two sons.

General Magnus Malan, soldier and politician, was born on January 30, 1930. He died on July 18, 2011, aged 81

Petty Officer Charles Walker, GC

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3099047.ece

Seaman who was decorated for his heroism in rescuing a fellow sailor from burning oil after his ship was sunk in the siege of Malta

The failure of two convoys to get essential relief supplies through to Malta in June 1942 threw the precarious situation on the island into sharp relief. Only two merchantmen got through. Although besieged, Malta’s harbour and airfields provided bases for ships and submarines of the Royal Navy and RAF aircraft that threatened the sea supply lines of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the Italian forces in the Western Desert. If Malta fell, the Allies could do little to prevent unrestricted reinforcement and supply of their enemies in North Africa.

Aviation fuel and anti-aircraft ammunition stocks on the island were numbered in days — at action rates — and general supplies down to less than five weeks when Convoy WS21S of 14 freighters with an escort equivalent to a battlefleet, including three aircraft carriers and the battleships HMS Nelson and Rodney, began to converge on Gibraltar in early August. The aim of Operation Pedestal was to fight the convoy through to Malta. On board HMS Ledbury, one of the Hunt class destroyers assigned as close escort to the merchantmen, was Petty Officer C. H. Walker.

WS21S and her escort entered the Mediterranean on August 9 but it was impossible to keep such a concourse of ships secret for long. At 1315 hours on August 11 the carrier HMS Eagle was struck simultaneously by four torpedoes fired by the German U73 and sank in six minutes. From 1420 hours that day, the merchantmen and escorts came under relentless attack from German and Italian bombers, torpedo bombers, E-boats and submarines. The convoy’s position 30 miles SSE of the island of Pantelleria was identified by German reconnaissance aircraft soon after dawn on August 13. A formation of 12 Ju88 bombers appeared at 0800 hours and immediately began to circle in readiness for attack. The merchant ships were steaming in line ahead for Malta — still 150 miles distant — and expecting an escort of RAF Beaufighters to arrive at any moment. But lack of fighter-control ships in the group precluded direct communication with the aircraft, which were still scouring the sea for the convoy. After failing to hit the tanker Ohio, two Ju88s singled out the cargo ship SS Waimarama for attention. The first aircraft released a stick of five bombs, of which a cluster of four struck the merchantman close to the bridge. The vessel had a deck cargo of petrol, which ignited in one sheet of flame; a violent explosion amidships threw up a huge column of smoke and debris as the ship first listed to starboard and then sank in a widening circle of burning oil.

To the crews of the accompanying escorts it seemed certain that all aboard the Waimarama must be lost. But, hearing shouts through the smoke, Lieutenant Roger Hill, RN, brought HMS Ledbury close in to the scene, lowered boats to pick up survivors and, rigging out scrambling nets as he went, plunged his ship into the flaming area of sea to rescue men trapped in pockets of clear water.

Petty Officer Walker, mustered on deck with others to give any assistance needed, saw one of the injured survivors of the Waimarama in difficulties in the water. Well knowing that the Ledbury might have to turn away at any moment to avoid the flames, he dived over the side and held the casualty up in the water, with burning oil all around them, until they could both be hauled aboard the destroyer.

Thirty-three of the Waimarama’s crew of 120 were rescued by the Ledbury. Scarcely was this accomplished than she came upon some of the crew of the Melbourne Star who had leapt overboard believing their own ship to be on fire as she became enveloped in the pall of smoke where the Waimarama had gone down.

Three of the 14 merchant ships of the convoy reached Malta on the evening of August 13; a fourth — the cargo vessel Brisbane Star — limped in on the 14th. Finally, the heavily damaged but vital oil tanker Ohio, with two destroyers lashed alongside to give her forward way and the indefatigable Ledbury acting as her rudder astern, crept into Valetta harbour with her decks awash at 0800 hours on the 15th. Nine merchant ships of the convoy were lost but 55,000 tons of critically important cargo reached besieged Malta.

Charles Henry Walker — who always preferred to be known as “Charles Henry” — received the Albert Medal from King George VI on August 13, 1943 — one year to the day after the act of heroism that had earned him the award. The Albert Medal, named after Queen Victoria’s Prince Consort, was instituted in 1867 specifically for saving life at sea and was regarded as equal — in terms of the degree of gallantry it honoured — to the Victoria Cross.

The George Cross had been introduced by King George VI in 1940, after the onset of German air attacks on British cities, to recognise “acts of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger” by civilians or members of the Armed Forces when not in the immediate presence of the enemy. In a move to rationalise awards for gallantry in such circumstances, a royal warrant of 1971 authorised all surviving holders of the Albert Medal to exchange their awards for the George Cross. Walker received his from the Queen on March 12, 1973.

Charles Henry Walker was born in Portsmouth in 1914 and joined the Royal Navy as a seaman in the early 1930s. He served with the Royal Navy off Palestine during the Arab rebellion of 1938 and shortly after this became a galley cook specialist, attaining the rank of petty officer cook shortly after the outbreak of war. He served with Atlantic convoys, in the Mediterranean and with HMS Ledbury during the Italian campaign.

On leaving the Royal Navy in 1954 he became a postman in Portsmouth, eventually retiring to Cleveland. After receiving the George Cross he donated his Albert Medal to the museum of HMS Victory at Portsmouth.

He is survived by his wife, Brenda, their son and two daughters.

Petty Officer Charles Henry Walker, GC, naval veteran, was born on March 9, 1914. He died on July 17, 2011, aged 97


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Admiral of the Fleet Sir Julian Oswald

First Sea Lord and Cold War nuclear tactician who approved the decision to send Wrens to sea

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8650677/Admiral-of-the-Fleet-Sir-Julian-Oswald.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3100262.ece

First Sea Lord who used his vast experience of naval strategy to argue that Britain should retain Trident as its nuclear deterrent

During his final six years in the Navy, between 1987 and 1993, two issues of particular importance occupied Julian Oswald while he held the influential posts of Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet and First Sea Lord.

He realised from his previous experience at the MoD that Britain could never afford the RAF’s proposals for a tactical air-to-surface nuclear missile as well as the Trident submarine-borne nuclear ballistic missile system without serious financial harm to the conventional capabilities of the Armed Forces.

In the arcane theology of nuclear deterrence, Trident was designed to be the strategic system of last resort; always on patrol at sea, invulnerable and, during the Cold War, aimed at defeating the anti-missile defences of the “Moscow criterion” and thereby deterring the Soviet leadership from threatening Britain or Europe.

However, such an all-or-nothing posture lacked a certain amount of credibility. Nato’s deterrent philosophy had envisaged a series of flexible escalatory responses to the threat of aggression that would hopefully contain any conflict to a level below the strategic, with its fearful possibility of “nuclear winter”. This continuing principle called for the possession of a number of less powerful weapons that could be more flexibly targeted, but, if land-based, would raise all sorts of problems concerned with “counter-force” retaliation and internal security.

During the last years of the Cold War and thereafter Oswald campaigned for the adaptation of the Trident system in terms of its technology and targeting flexibility so that it would be acceptable in a “sub-strategic” or even a non-nuclear role. In this he was successful. Trident remains Britain’s only nuclear weapon system.

It was also clear that in the post-Cold War political environment the objectives of national navies had changed. Long outdated was a strategy that required the defeat of the enemy fleet in order to establish sea control. In its place came the concepts of “expeditionary warfare” and “littoral operations”, recently illustrated by world events from Sierra Leone to the Gulf.

The role of the Royal Navy would be even more the gun that fires the projectile — the Army — ashore than it had been historically. An emphasis on amphibious operations, or “brown water” as opposed to “blue water”, had been part of naval staff thinking for some time, and Oswald succeeded in establishing the case for the large helicopter-carrying ship, HMS Ocean, which by its presence in the fleet also brought forward in its wake the logic for further specialist amphibious shipping and other capability upgrades.

During his time as First Sea Lord, Oswald was also responsible for the introduction of women in seagoing ships, a controversial issue for which he was criticised by a small clique but which became accepted as thoroughly normal and an initiative that defused any thought that the Navy’s practices had not kept up with the times.

John Julian Robertson Oswald was born in 1933, passed out from Dartmouth Naval College in 1951 and served as a midshipman in Britain’s last battleship, Vanguard, being present for her final and noisy main armament firings. After sub-lieutenant courses, he was appointed in charge of the 50-plus midshipmen in the “gunroom” of the training carrier Theseus. “It contained all the funnies — air cadets, Canadians, Venezuelans, reservist national servicemen,” he said.

As the “action stations” officer of the watch in the cruiser HMS Newfoundland, Oswald witnessed the destruction of the Egyptian frigate Domiat in the Gulf of Suez during the ill-fated 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli campaign against the ambitions of President Nasser. Domiat was sailing south with lights on when she was challenged and illuminated by the darkened Newfoundland’s searchlight and ordered to halt. Domiat responded with three shots from her 4in gun before Newfoundland’s 8in salvos knocked out her gun and wrecked her machinery, stopping her attempt to ram. Newfoundland suffered six casualties. Only about half Domiat’s crew — 68 — were rescued. Oswald recorded that the action “made a pretty horrifying impression on me at close range”.

Still in Newfoundland, Oswald met in Hong Kong his wife Roni Thompson, the daughter of the colony’s Accountant-General.

His next tour was in the Dartmouth Training Squadron, followed by the year-long course specialising in gunnery at Portsmouth. Oswald never considered himself a properly tribal gunnery officer, being averse to “gas and gaiters”, and because his only two gunnery jobs were concerned with air weapons, the first of these in the large carrier Victorious in the Far East where he was responsible for arming the high-performance jets, then carried with their bombs and missiles, as well as custody of atomic weapons.

His first command was the minesweeper Yarnton which, unusually for this class of patrol vessels, actually had to sweep a Second World War minefield off the Iceland coast as well as contribute to the laborious and unrewarding task of checking that European shipping routes were clear of wartime mines. He did the naval staff course in 1964, followed by tours as an instructor in air weapons and second-in-command of the frigate Naiad in the crack Londonderry Squadron.

His first Ministry of Defence job was in the plans division — “in some distinguished company” — from where he was promoted to commander and captaincy of the frigate Bacchante. This was an amusing duty with nine months as the West Indies’ guardship and a period in Malta “practising for our withdrawal” under the regime of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.

While serving in the Defence Policy Staff, his promotion to captain earned an extra tour at assistant director level in the division dealing with matters outside the Nato area. After the Royal College of Defence Studies in 1976, Oswald commanded the destroyer Newcastle, then being built at Swan Hunter’s yard on the Tyne and subject to delays. A brief commission included a visit to St Helena where his father “had left him a great aunt in his will”. He was able to fly ashore in the helicopter with her birthday cake on his knees.

He subsequently toured the country in charge of the Royal Navy Presentation Team, delivering lectures to a variety of audiences, recorded as “hard work, but great fun”. In Exeter prison an old lag asked him whether he had “the key” (to the atom bomb). “Of course,” he said. Oswald’s car keys satisfied him.

After two years in command of Dartmouth Oswald was promoted to rear-admiral in 1982 and appointed to the MoD in the assistant chief of defence staff in the policy and nuclear role. This was followed by his final seagoing tour in 1985 to 1987 as Flag Officer Third Flotilla that carried with it the role of Commander Anti-Submarine Warfare Striking Force. This function was important to Nato’s campaign plans for the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea which envisaged a seaborne reinforcement of Nato’s northern flank on the Norwegian coast. Continued allocation of this role to a Royal Navy officer by Nato planners, particularly the Americans, was a tribute to a British reputation for anti-submarine expertise that had to be maintained by hard training and technological effort.

He was appointed KCB in 1987, and advanced to GCB in 1989. On leaving the Navy in 1993 he undertook a wide range of activities. One was his hobby as a glider pilot which he had taken up when a rear-admiral. He became a qualified instructor and was proud that he introduced more than 800 people to gliding. His height record was 22,500ft over the Cairngorms.

Between 1993 and 2005 Oswald was a non-executive member of the Wessex Regional Health Authority and vice-chairman of the South and West Regional Health Authority; director and chairman of the software company Sema; director of MGM Assurance; director of marine specialists James Fisher and Sons and Corda (Operational Analysis) as well as chairman of Aerosystems International, Informatic and Green Issues (Planning PR).

His charitable and institutional activities included presidency of the Officers’ Association, the Sea Cadet Association, the Shipwrecked Mariners and Fishermens’ Royal Benevolent Society. He was vice-president of Seafarers UK, the World Ship Trust and the RUSI. He was a trustee of the National Maritime Museum, and chairman of the National Historic Ships Committee and the quarterly The Naval Review. He was chairman of the gunners’ St Barbara Association and patron of Deal Maritime Museum and of the Waveney Stardust Trust for the disabled and the Solent MS Therapies Group.

He was a governor of the University of Portsmouth until 2000 and served on the councils of the White Ensign Association and the Forces Pensions Society. He was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and a Stowaway of the Southampton Master Mariners. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and had an honorary degree from Portsmouth.

Oswald was widely admired for his leadership style; entirely lacking bombast and able to get his way by wellinformed argument, courteously presented and with an irresistible determination. “Watching him chair a meeting was an education,” noted a colleague.

He is survived by his wife, Roni, and their two sons and three daughters.

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Julian Oswald, GCB, First Sea Lord, 1989-93, was born on August 11, 1933. He died on July 19, 2011, aged 77


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