Lieutenant-Colonel David Rose

Lieutenant-Colonel David Rose, who has died aged 98, was awarded a DSO during active service in British Somaliland and a Bar while commanding a battalion of the Black Watch in the Korean War.

Rose (right), in command of 1 BW in Korea, accompanies General Collins, the US Army Chief of Staff, during the latter's visit to the Battalion Command Post on The Hook.

In 1940 British Somaliland was defended by a small force mainly composed of colonial troops, with the 2nd Battalion the Black Watch (2 BW) held in reserve. Five Italian brigades, stiffened by Black Shirts and supported by aircraft, armour and artillery, forced the main British contingent to withdraw towards Berbera, having fiercely defended the only natural obstacle, a dry wadi known as the Tug Argan.

On August 17 the battalion, equipped with a single anti-tank gun, was at Barkasan and acting as rearguard. After a long day's fighting, ammunition was running short and Rose, then a captain commanding the forward company, found himself at great risk of being cut off.

He decided to counter-attack and led his men down the hill in a fierce bayonet charge. After being wounded in the shoulder, he stuffed his arm into his belt to stop it flopping about and continued to lead the attack.

The Italian forces broke and fled, and many of their native levies were shot down by Black Shirts who had been waiting at their rear. The Highlanders pursued the enemy for a mile and left them so demoralised that they offered no further interference to the battalion's withdrawal under cover of darkness. Rose was awarded his first DSO, at that time an unusual award for a junior officer.

David MacNeil Campbell Rose, the son of Brigadier John Rose, was born at Alverstoke, Hampshire, on March 23 1912. His three brothers had distinguished careers in the Army in the Second World War; two of them were highly decorated.

After Glenalmond and Sandhurst, David was commissioned into the Black Watch. Army service in Scotland included a period spent on the Royal Guard at Balmoral. King George V was Colonel-in-Chief of the Black Watch and nearing the end of his reign. On one occasion, at the Ghillies' Ball, he discovered Rose and a fellow officer helping themselves to a bottle of champagne which had been specially left out for himself.

As a "punishment" he ordered both young officers to dance with the Queen and then come shooting with him the next day. During the shoot, Rose's overenthusiastic dog retrieved a grouse from immediately behind the King's butt.

"My bird I think, Rose!" said the King.

Not wishing to be deprived of one of his small bag, and aware that the King was very proud of being a superb shot, Rose, in some trepidation, replied: "No, Sir, it must be one of mine. It's a runner!"

After a snort, the gruff reply came back: "Proper little courtier, aren't you, Rose? All right. I suppose you can count it as one of yours!"

In 1938, 1 BW was deployed to Palestine. The troopship docked at Tangiers, allowing time for a run ashore. While visiting the souk, Rose was astonished to recognise his youngest brother dressed as an Arab and begging. The young man subsequently joined the Foreign Legion and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire.

After his exploits in British Somaliland, Rose attended Staff College in Haifa. But soon after taking up his first staff appointment in Cairo, 2 BW urgently needed reinforcements following its attempt to break out from Tobruk, and he returned to the battalion as adjutant.

Rose was subsequently posted to Burma to command one of the two Black Watch columns in the second Chindit campaign. There he was wounded again in the shoulder, but managed to continue in command behind Japanese lines for some weeks before severe blood poisoning forced his evacuation and a long period of convalescence.

After a spell on a military mission in Cairo and a posting to Tripoli as brigade major, he was recalled from commanding the regimental depot in Perth to take command of 1 BW shortly before its departure for Korea in June 1952.

That autumn the battalion took over defence of "The Hook", a prominent salient dominating the Samichon river valley. With the help of the Royal Engineers, deep tunnels were excavated in each company position to provide protection from bombardments and allow the soldiers to take cover if they were overrun. Rose was able to call for airburst shelling to be brought down on his own positions to break up enemy attacks before clearing the trenches by bayonet.

On November 18 and 19, 1 BW was subjected to repeated assaults from two Chinese battalions. On the first night, when they came under heavy bombardment, Rose was never out of touch with his forward platoons. The Hook was held and the Chinese suffered large losses. In recognition of his outstanding leadership, Rose was awarded a Bar to his DSO.

In August 1953 he took the battalion to Kenya to help suppress the Mau Mau uprising. On returning to England, he went to the small arms school as chief instructor.

He retired from the Army in 1958 and, having settled in Perthshire, enjoyed shooting and fishing and creating a garden.

David Rose died on October 24. He married, in 1945, Lady Jean Ramsay, younger daughter of the Earl of Dalhousie. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their son and daughter.

Source: Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/8088407/Lieutenant-Colonel-David-Rose.html

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, VC: Camel Corps officer

For valour: Wilson, who left the army in 1949, is seen here at a 1988 VC and GC Association reunion in London, with Gurkha holders of the decoration

Somaliland, 1940: Wilson is seated in the front of the truck holding the dog. It was killed on the first day of the action in which Wilson was taken prisoner

Eric Wilson won the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the campaigns in Africa during the Second World War. His story is one of persistent yet seemingly nonchalant gallantry as, by his lights, he was simply doing what he was trained to do. He stuck to his precious guns to the bitter end and so certain was the brigade staff that he had been killed in the enemy’s final attack he was awarded a posthumous VC. But he survived to fight in two more campaigns.

Mussolini’s declaration of war on June 10, 1940, two weeks before the fall of France, found him with no enemy immediately to hand. He therefore ordered his forces in Abyssinia to attack the nearby British colonial garrisons. In August, three columns each of brigade strength with tanks and supported by bomber and fighter aircraft crossed into British Somaliland south of Hargeisa and headed for the Tug Argan pass leading to the seaport capital, Berbera, on the Gulf of Aden. The Somaliland Camel Corps delayed the advance from the frontier, covering as best it could preparation of the main defensive position astride the Tug Argan pass.

Wilson, then a captain, commanded the Camel Corps machinegun company. His task was to provide fire support for the Northern Rhodesia Regiment manning the central sector of the front across the enemy’s path. So far as the terrain allowed, he positioned his water-cooled Vickers medium machineguns where they could strike the enemy in the flanks when they moved forward. But, because of the width of the front, several had to be sited frontally with wide arcs of fire. Having briefed all his gun crews, he joined the most forward pillbox on Observation Hill overlooking the enemy’s main approach.

The Italian attack opened on the morning of August 11 with an artillery bombardment of Wilson’s positions. A shell of the first salvo exploded immediately outside the embrasure of his pillbox, blowing the Vickers off its tripod and wounding one of the crew. To Wilson’s surprise the weapon was undamaged and he had it in action again within minutes, but the next salvo killed the corporal in charge of the gun, wounded Wilson in the right shoulder and left eye and smashed his spectacles.

Times Archive

• 1940, Capt. Wilson, VC - mistaken report of death

During the afternoon he detected an Italian mountain artillery battery working its way up from the road to the pass. He had its range and opened fire, only to receive an immediate retaliation from the enemy’s fixed-charge high-explosive shells. Counter-battery fire from his own artillery and a tropical downpour brought action to a halt for the day.

Next morning the Italians began to push forward small groups of infantry and artillery that worked their way along the sides of the Tur Argan gap to attack the British positions at close quarters. Then, on August 13, the enemy launched a large-scale assault, overran the British artillery position and renewed their fire on Wilson’s machinegun posts. On the 15th two of his guns were blown to pieces but he continued to man his own gun until the position was overrun. The citation for his VC, gazetted on October 11, 1940, opened with the words, “For most conspicuous gallantry on active service in Somaliland” and ended with, “The enemy finally overran the post at 5pm when Captain Wilson, fighting to the last, was killed.”

He had been taken prisoner, however, not just wounded but suffering from malaria. This only became known in April 1941 when the 5th Indian Division captured the prisoner-of-war camp at Adi Ugri in Eritrea, where Wilson was being held. Together with other prisoners, he had almost completed a tunnel for a mass escape attempt when they awoke one morning to find all their guards had gone. By then he had learnt of his award from an RAF officer who had been shot down and taken to the same camp.

Eric Charles Twelves Wilson was born in Sandown, Isle of Wight, the son of the Rev C. C. C. Wilson. He was educated at Marlborough and Royal Military College Sandhurst from where he was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment in 1933. He had been attracted to Africa since boyhood through stories told by his grandfather, who had founded the Church Missionary Society station in Buganda in 1876. So, after four years with the East Surreys, he volunteered for secondment to the King’s African Rifles and served in Tanganyika with the 2nd (Nyasaland) Battalion until he secured a second secondment to the Somaliland Camel Corps in 1939.

On release from the Italian PoW camp he volunteered to join the Long Range Desert Group operating round the flanks of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. His knowledge of desert conditions proved a useful asset but, at the end of the North African campaign, he went to Burma as second-in-command of a battalion of The King’s African Rifles. He took part in the advance of the 11th East African Division down the notoriously disease-ridden Kabaw Valley to establish a bridgehead over the Chindwin at Kelawa. He then contracted scrub typhus and spent two months in hospital before being medically downgraded and returned to East Africa. He spent the final months of the war commanding the Infantry Training Centre at Jinja in Uganda.

Wilson left the Army in 1949 to join the Overseas Civil Service in Tanganyika, where he served until independence of the British East African countries led to his retirement in 1961.

He joined the staff of the London Goodenough Trust for Overseas Students, where his fluency in Kiswahili, Gikuria and Chinyakusa stood him in good stead. He was the honorary secretary of the Anglo-Somali Society, 1972-77, and again from 1988 to 1990.

He married Anne Pleydell-Bouverie in 1943. The marriage was dissolved in 1953, and in that year he married Angela Joy, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel J. McK Gordon. He is survived by his second wife, one of the two sons of his first marriage and one son of his second. His death leaves nine surviving holders of the Victoria Cross.

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, VC, was born on October 2, 1912. He died on December 23, 2008, aged 96

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5415089.ece

Air Chief Marshal Sir John Barraclough

Wartime flying boat pilot of high ability who made his career in the RAF and flew more than 70 types of aircraft.

Barraclough [right] ready for his flight in a Tornado to mark his retirement as Inspector of the RAuxAF in 1995

Air Chief Marshal Sir John Barraclough, who died on Saturday aged 90, gave an exceptionally long period of devoted service to the Crown and to defence affairs; after serving in the RAF for 38 years, in retirement he conducted various studies for the Air Force Board and the Chiefs of Staff before becoming the Inspector-General of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.

During the Second World War Barraclough flew continuously on maritime air duties with Coastal Command and in the Indian Ocean. Before the war he flew Ansons with No 269 Squadron from Abbotsinch, near Glasgow, and, in a foretaste of what lay ahead, he was engaged in the air searches for the submarine Thetis when it failed to surface in Liverpool Bay in 1939.

On the outbreak of war he converted to flying boats, and in 1940 he operated with No 240 Squadron from the Shetland Islands. Flying over the northern North Sea he flew in support of the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force to Norway and on searches for German ships seeking to break out from the Baltic.

After a period flying anti-submarine patrols and convoy escorts off the west coast of Scotland, he was made chief instructor of the Flying Boat Conversion Unit at Invergordon, where he was awarded an AFC for developing innovative methods of operational training.

In February 1942 Barraclough reformed No 209 Squadron, equipped with the Catalina flying boat, before leaving in June for the Indian Ocean to support the Eastern Fleet for the Madagascar campaign.

Operating with the barest facilities from Comoro Island in the Mozambique Channel, and from other island bases, he flew intensive operations and was awarded a DFC. "This officer," the citation concluded, "has shown the greatest devotion to duty and is a born leader of men."

Barraclough continued to operate with No 209 over vast areas of the Indian Ocean, providing convoy escorts and seeking out U-boats and their mother ship, Elizabeth Schliemann.

Promoted to wing commander at the age of 24, he commanded the captured Italian airfield at Mogadishu, Somaliland, where Wellingtons conducted anti-submarine operations. On his return to Britain in May 1944 he became chief instructor at a flying-boat training unit and was mentioned in dispatches.

John Barraclough was born at Hounslow on May 2 1918 and educated at Cranbrook School. After three years' volunteer service with the Artists' Rifles while working in the City of London, in 1938 he was granted a four-year commission in the RAF to train as a pilot.

At the end of the war Barraclough was negotiating his admission to the Middle Temple as a student when he was offered a permanent commission in the RAF, which he accepted.

After completing a period of service in Egypt, he joined the Central Flying School and was appointed to its examining wing, first as a flight commander and then in command of the wing responsible for the flying instructional standards in the RAF and in many other national air forces which held the RAF in esteem.

As a staff officer at the headquarters of Training Command, he wrote an imaginative paper on the pros and cons of using a basic jet aircraft for initial pilot training, and this paved the way for the introduction into service of the long-serving Jet Provost aircraft.

Barraclough was always a restive staff officer who hankered after action – in his career he flew more than 70 different types of aircraft – and he was able to persuade his commander-in-chief that he should take the first Vampire training aircraft on a trial flight to Southern Rhodesia.

With few navigation aids, Barraclough and his fellow pilot completed the 10,000-mile round trip in the cramped cockpit of the short range, single-engine jet without mishap. He was awarded a Queen's Commendation for Valuable Services in the Air.

After commanding the two fighter stations at Biggin Hill and Middleton St George (now Durham Tees Valley Airport), he served in the Far East during the campaign against the Communist terrorists in Malaya.

On promotion to air commodore in 1960 he took up the post of director of public relations at the Air Ministry, where he was deeply involved in defending the philosophy and strategy of nuclear deterrence then exercised by Bomber Command; he also defended (in the end unavailingly) the emerging TSR2 from its political opponents. His efforts on these sensitive issues were recognised with a CBE.

On completing his time as AOC No 19 Group in Coastal Command, Barraclough took a sabbatical and, at his own expense and on unpaid leave, enrolled on the advanced management course at Harvard Business School.

On his return in 1968 the RAF appointed him Air Officer (Administration) of Bomber Command to manage the imminent, and highly emotional, mergers of Bomber, Fighter, Coastal and Signals Commands. Such was his success that he was promoted and appointed CB.

He served as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff before becoming the Air Secretary, an appointment he did not relish. His final post before retiring from the RAF in 1978 was as Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. He was appointed KCB in 1970.

Barraclough had a sharp intellect, a dry wit and boundless energy and enthusiasm. He was an eloquent and persuasive writer, and after retirement from the RAF was much in demand. For 12 years he served as a commissioner and vice-chairman of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

In 1976 he had been appointed an honorary air commodore in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and, with the force employed in the ground defence role, he found himself very much at home as a former territorial rifleman.

For five years he was Inspector-General of the RAuxAF, during which time he was appointed a Gentleman Usher to the Sword of State with occasional ceremonial duties. He was able to take advantage of an informal opportunity after a State Opening of Parliament to seek the Queen's agreement to the award of a Colour.

This was granted, and in June 1989 750 serving members of the RAuxAF paraded at RAF Benson on the occasion of the presentation of the Queen's Colour.

On his farewell as the Inspector in 1995, Barraclough flew a bombing sortie in a Tornado. It was the 57th anniversary of his first flight in the RAF.

For six years in the 1970s he was editorial director of the defence magazine NATO's Nations. He was also a co-author, with General Sir John Hackett, of the best-selling book The Third World War, to which he contributed the air aspects.

In 1980 he became president of the Air Power Association, and the next year sponsored the Barraclough Trophy, awarded annually to the unit or individual member of the RAF who has made an outstanding contribution to RAF public relations in the previous year.

Barraclough was chairman of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, and then vice-chairman of the Air League, receiving its Gold Medal for distinguished services to British aviation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and was a Liveryman of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators.

In 2002 he was approached to support an initiative to commemorate all those who had lost their lives in Coastal Command. He was appointed chairman of the Maritime Air Trust, which under his guidance and management launched a formidable fund-raising programme with the Duke of Edinburgh as its very supportive patron.

On March 16 2004 the Queen dedicated a sculpted tribute and roll of honour in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey. Barraclough – who, aged 86, handed over the reigns of the Trust to a former Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Peter Squire – always considered it an honour to have been associated with the project.

Barraclough lived in Bath, where in later years he was invited to be chairman, and later president, of the city's Royal Crescent Society, an organisation he led with his usual vigour in countering the adverse local effects of un-managed tourism.

He was a fine sailor and horseman. In the Admiral's Cup of 1973 he navigated the Irish yacht Clarion to success in her division of the Fastnet race. In the winter he rode regularly to hounds wherever he found himself, and he followed three-day eventing with keen interest.

He was a past-president of the RAF Modern Pentathlon Association and of the Combined Services' Equitation Association. He listed amongst his hobbies, "stilt walking (retired)".

John Barraclough was a tall man with a commanding presence but an unassuming manner. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer he displayed stoical courage.

Shortly before his death he paid tribute to his late wife Maureen (née McCormack), whom he had married in 1946 (and who died in 2001), writing that "her devoted and unselfish support during a taxing career was quite simply immeasurable". He is survived by their daughter.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1947293/Air-Chief-Marshal-Sir-John-Barraclough.html

Squadron Leader 'Bam' Bamberger

From The Times

February 20, 2008

Air ace who fought in the Battle of Britain and the defence of Malta

After joining the Auxiliary Air Force as a photographer before the war, “Bam” Bamberger saw action as a Spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain, after which he was posted to Malta where he took part in the desperate air defence of the island during 1941. He was subsequently involved in fighter operations in support of the invasion of Sicily and the Eighth Army's drive up through Italy.

Cyril Stanley “Bam” Bamberger was born in Hyde, Cheshire, and educated locally. He left school at 14 and joined Lever Brothers as an electrical aprentice in 1934. In 1936 he volunteered for the Auxiliary Air Force and was posted as a photographer to 610 “County of Chester” Squadron, which had been formed that year as a bomber squadron at Hooton Park in the Wirral, not far from the company's Port Sunlight headquarters. He was accepted for pilot training in 1938, not long after which the squadron became a fighter unit and received its first Spitfires early in 1940.

In July 1940 the squadron was moved to Biggin Hill, and Bamberger flew with it as a sergeant pilot during the early air fighting over the Channel that followed the Dunkirk evacuation. The squadron suffered heavy casualties but Bamberger was credited with a “probable” Messerschmitt Me109 on August 28 in combat off the Kent coast.

When 610 was withdrawn to rest in mid-September Bamberger was posted to 41 Squadron and was soon back in action over Kent, where he gained his first confirmed combat victory, again over an Me109, on October 15.

With the Battle of Britain winding down, Bamberger volunteered for Malta, and on November 17, 1940, was in the Mediterranean aboard the aircraft carrier Argus from which a dozen Hurricanes were flown off, led by two naval Skuas, for the 450-mile flight to the island. As he was not familiar with the Hurricane he was not among those pilots selected to fly, and hence was spared the tragedy that ensued.

Many of the pilots, unused to long range flying, had set their engine revs too high for a flight of that length, and the navigator of one of the guiding Skuas was fresh from training school. Eight Hurricanes and one Skua ran out of fuel and were lost. The four fighters that reached Malta safely did so with respectively, 12, four, three and two gallons of petrol in their tanks.

Bamberger reached Malta in December in the destroyer Hotspur. With the island under heavy air attack, he was soon in thick of the action with 261 Squadron, and he shot down two Ju87 Stukas on successive days in January 1941 over Grand Harbour.

After a period back in the UK where he was commissioned and helped to train arriving American pilots in gunnery, he was back in the Mediterranean, this time as a flight commander with 93 Squadron, scoring further victories in the Sicilian and Italian campaigns before returning to Britain as a gunnery instructor in late 1944. By then his leadership and fine shooting had earned him the DFC and Bar.

After demobilisation he returned to Lever before joining the management of a Guinness subsidiary. When 610 Squadron was reformed as a Royal Auxiliary Air Force unit he rejoined it as a flight commander and became its CO in 1950, by when it had converted to Gloster Meteors. When the RAuxAF was mobilised after the outbreak of the Korean War he accepted a permanent commission, and for most of the duration of that conflict was an intelligence officer at the Air Ministry.

He later converted to helicopters and served in a squadron of Bristol Sycamores in Aden, finally retiring in 1959, by which time he had also received the Air Efficiency Award and Bar.

He then went into business, founding a packaging materials company, and then running an antiques business.He remained active in RAF matters and was closely involved with the Bentley Priory Battle of Britain Trust, of which he was vice-chairman.

“Bam” Bamberger is survived by his wife Heather, whom he married in 1954, and by three sons and a daughter.

Squadron Leader “Bam” Bamberger, DFC and Bar, AE and Bar, wartime fighter pilot, was born on May 4, 1919. He died on February 3, 2008, aged 88

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3398890.ece