From the Daily Telegraph of 25th June:

Brigadier Leslie Marsh

'Commando who rallied his men to repel repeated Chinese attacks during the Korean War.'

Brigadier Leslie Marsh, who has died aged 86, won an MC during the Korean War for fighting his way along a single-track dirt road to relieve a base, and then helping to hold it against repeated attacks by the Chinese Communists.

In 1950 Marsh was a section commander in 41 Independent Commando Royal Marines, comprising British and American marines as well as other troops; on November 29 it was ordered to advance "at all costs" from Koto-ri to relieve the UN base at Hagaru-ri.

They made their way through such heavy fire that an American tank company refused a request to spread out through the column, leaving Marsh and the convoy unprotected. The marines took two hills, but resistance stiffened, and at nightfall in "Hell Fire Valley" the Chinese blocked the road and split the convoy in two, destroying all the force's radios and soft-skinned vehicles.

Marsh fought on with the remainder of the column as the thermometer fell to minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit, but he was eventually stopped by intense mortar and small arms fire when he was within three miles of the Americans at the UN garrison. Despite a serious thigh wound, Marsh refused all offers of first aid, rallied his remaining men by the light of his section's burning trucks and led them on foot across rough frozen ground to Hagaru-ri.

There were some 321 British and Americans casualties; others were captured; and some retreated back to Koto-ri. Marsh was one of only 100 survivors of 41 Commando who entered the beleaguered base, where his seasoned marines were crucial to its survival.

Over the next few nights they formed a mobile reserve within the base as the Chinese 58th and 59th divisions attacked in waves: 41 Commando lost a quarter of its remaining strength, but the enemy lost an estimated 8,000 killed and wounded until their ammunition was exhausted.

Marsh was awarded a Military Cross for his selfless conduct, outstanding leadership and determination to succeed.

Leslie George Marsh was born on October 5 1918 at Handsworth, Staffordshire, and educated at Clifton before joining the Royal Marines in 1938. He served in the battleship Iron Duke and in the cruiser Birmingham, before volunteering for commando training in Wales before the Normandy landings. While leading an attack by 40 Commando on German positions on the River Reno, during the Commachio campaign in 1945, he was shot in the shoulder at close range by a burst from a machine pistol.

After Korea, and instructing at the Commando School in Devon, he was appointed to the Army's school of infantry at Warminster and then to the Royal Marines non-commissioned officers' school at Plymouth. There he became one of that distinct band of bachelor officers who shared a love of literature, poetry and fine wine. Years later, if given a line of a Housman poem, Marsh could recite the entire work from memory.

At Suez in 1956, Marsh was the senior troop commander of 45 Commando which landed in the first wave of a helicopter-borne assault from the sea; it was the first time such a tactic had been employed against a defended beachhead. He was pulled back to take over as operations officer after his CO was wounded, but frequently returned to his beloved marines "at the sharp end, where leaders should always be". Much to his chagrin, the Egyptians surrendered within 48 hours.

In 1960 Marsh commanded 45 Commando in Aden. The protectorate was reasonably quiet and stable, but there was the risk of a sudden uprising, and Marsh needed all his powers of leadership and independence of mind to keep his men fit, trained and happy.

The next year he flew his men to the Iraqi border as part of a larger British force, which included 42 Commando in the carrier Bulwark, to deter an invasion of Kuwait. This successful operation stands as an object lesson in the value of timely deterrence.

Marsh commanded 3 Commando Brigade during the Borneo campaign in 1962-64, and his final appointment was as commandant of the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, where he took the greatest pleasure in the training of young officers, NCOs and marines.

A typical official report spoke of Marsh's power of leadership and his sense of duty.

In retirement Marsh worked happily as personnel manager for Wiggins Teape at Basingstoke, before marrying and retiring to France.

Leslie Marsh died on June 9. He married, in 1972, Annie Watts (née Lescher), who survives him with her four children, with whom Marsh shared a loving friendship and affection. He is buried a few yards from his home at St Sulpice d'Eymet in the Dordogne, where he lived for a quarter of a century.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...689093,00.html

Obituaries



July 11, 2005

Allan Beckett
March 4, 1914 - June 19, 2005
Designer whose floating roadway was crucial to the Mulberry harbour of the Normandy landings



BEGINNING his war as a sapper digging trenches on the South Coast at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, Allan Beckett came to play a significant role in the success of the Mulberry harbours used during and after the Normandy landings of June 1944.
The notion of the Mulberry had come from Churchill, determined never to repeat the 1915 debacle of the Gallipoli landings over open beaches. As early as 1942, with an invasion of the German-occupied Continent only a distant dream, he had prepared a minute for the chief of combined operations, headed: “Piers for use on beaches�.



“They must float up and down with the tide,� he noted. “The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.� These injunctions set down the essentials of the floating piers, protected by a breakwater of blockships and caissons, which enabled the vast tonnage of vehicles and stores to be got ashore to support the forces in the field.

Beckett’s contribution to the Mulberry was to design the floating roadway which connected the pierhead to the shore, and a system of anchors. The roadway had to be strong enough to withstand constant wave action which, as it happened in the appalling weather of June 1944, was much more severe than anticipated. Beckett’s design, which had been tested in the severe conditions of Scotland in winter, survived the storm which struck on June 19, 1944, and raged for three days.

Allan Harry Beckett was born in 1914 in East Ham, London. He read civil engineering at London University and before the war worked with the consulting engineers A. J. Bridie. When war came he was called up into the Royal Engineers in January 1940, and after basic sapper training was, at the time of Dunkirk, engaged in trench digging, watch duties and manning a searchlight at Folkestone. Commissioned in 1941, he was sent to King’s Newton, near Derby, to work under Lieutenant-Colonel W. T. Everall, a specialist on the rapid construction of railway bridges for battlefield use. As such he gained valuable experience in assembling light steel trestling.

In the wake of the Churchill minute Everall was charged by the War Office with designing a series of mile-long pontoons for use on shelving beaches under tidal conditions. When he showed his (top-secret) sketch of his arrangement to Beckett, his junior suggested various simplifications, which made the scheme more robust and flexible. Everall’s design for ther pontoons envisaged each having four legs. Beckett pointed out that the system would be more flexible without the legs, and Everall took his modifications back to the War Office, which liked them, and commissioned six bridge spans on pontoons.

In a week Beckett produced the works drawings and the pontoon bridge was constructed. It and two competing schemes (the Hamilton Swiss Roll and the Hughes Caisson Scheme) were tested at Cairn Head, Galloway, where, over a period, they were subjected to severe weather.

Summoned to Scotland to check his system after a particularly fierce storm, Beckett imagined that he was being called ruefully to inspect a mass of twisted and fractured metal. To his immense gratification the floating roadway had survived intact under the severest of torsion, while the Hamilton Swiss Roll had been washed away, and the Hughes Caisson, too, had failed. As Beckett later observed: “After several more days of rough weather it was not difficult for the chiefs of staff to make a choice.�

Beckett was next charged with designing a light anchor, but one of great holding power, to prevent the piers (by now called “Whales�) moving sideways. Naval opinion was sceptical of his ability to come up with a solution, but the Kite anchor as it became known, proved a great success on the beaches.

On D+1 (June 7, 1944), as technical adviser in the field to Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, Beckett set out for Arromanches, the site of the British Mulberry. There, after an anxious day and night at sea, he supervised the installation of the anchors, and over the next few days gave technical advice on constructing the Whales.

In the event the Americans at Mulberry A were first to have a pier in operation, on D+5. But the more methodical British approach to construction was vindicated in the violent storm of D+13, which damaged Mulberry A beyond repair, whereas Mulberry B functioned for four months, until the capture of Antwerp in October rendered it redundant. After the storm Beckett acted as liaison officer to the Americans for the transfer of such undamaged equipment at Mulberry A as could be used by the British on their harbour.

After his part in the Mulberry project was finished, Beckett carried out various tasks in the wake of the Allied advance. He showed how a stock of abandoned German bridging equipment, located near Brussels, could be put to use; he oversaw the installation of much of the Everall bridging equipment which came into its own as the Allied advance took it over river after river; and he instructed Dutch engineers in repairing gaps in the dykes made by RAF bombers at Walcheren Island. For this, surplus Mulberry units came in useful for plugging the breaches.

Beckett was appointed MBE for his work at Arromanches. He also received inventors’ awards for the design of the floating piers and for the Kite anchor. With the £3,000 he received for the latter, he built himself a house in Farnborough, Kent, where he settled.

After being demobbed Beckett joined Sir Bruce White, Wolfe Barry and Partners as chief engineer. There he was responsible for projects in India including the Tata locomotive works, the Bombay Marine oil terminal and a self-scouring lock gate to cope with heavily silt-laden waters at Bhavnagar. In the UK he built factories for Bibby. In 1959 he became a partner in the firm, and developed techniques for mini-hydraulic model studies for designing and building new ports in Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Libya, as well as Harwich and Cardiff.

As senior partner from 1983 he oversaw all the engineering aspects of a huge contract to build a port at Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Closer to home there were the design and construction of complex flood defences for London, including the Dartford Creek flood barrier.


Obituaries


Page 1 || Page 2

In official retirement from 1989, he acted as a consultant to Beckett Rankine Partnership, his son Tim’s firm, for its port development and tidal defences projects all over the world. A keen and adventurous yachtsman from boyhood, he also designed and had built a new yacht made of copper- nickel alloy, one of the few in the world.
He married in 1949 Ida James. She survives him, with two sons and a daughter.






Allan Beckett, MBE, engineer, was born on March 4, 1914. He died on June 19, 2005, aged 91.

Sadly, we seem to be losing these guys on an almost daily basis.



Charles Hargreaves
(Filed: 08/07/2005)

Charles Hargreaves, who has died aged 87, was parachuted into Yugoslavia by the Special Operations Executive to make himself "useful" to the Chetnik Royalist forces in 1943.

Microsoft

Speaking no Serbo-Croat but impeccably turned out in service dress, Sam Browne and riding boots, he narrowly missed landing on top of the signal bonfire. He then marched up to the waiting Chetniks, came to attention and saluted. An eyewitness said: "In the silence which succeeded the gasp of admiration, you could almost hear the prestige of the British Empire rising".

Changing into battledress and beret, Hargreaves was soon leading a group in Eastern Serbia, south of the Danube. It had a threefold mission: to sabotage the North-South railway communications by which German troops might be sent to Italy; to disrupt the Danube traffic, the main route for transporting Romanian oil to the Reich; and to attack the copper mines at Bor. The task was further complicated by the bitter fighting between Tito's Communists and the royalist General Mihailovic's Chetniks.

It was a cut-throat war with no quarter asked or given, but there were some Homeric touches. A beautiful Serbian girl took off Hargreaves's boots and socks after one hard march to wash his feet and dry them with her hair. His men buried a hoard of treasure - gold, diamonds and paper money dropped by canister - in a remote cave along with six Germans they had shot dead.

Operations were hampered by Mihailovic's reluctance to draw German reprisals onto the heads of the civilian population, as when one attack on Danube traffic led to the shooting of 150 Serbian hostages. The future President Tito's Communist Partisans had fewer scruples, and Hargreaves's group received an order to join the nearest Partisan unit; no further drops of supplies were to be made to Mihailovic.

A few months later all SOE operatives attached to Mihailovic were evacuated, but by then Hargreaves had been captured in a mountain hut by 25 Afrika Korps veterans while he was incapacitated by a kick from a horse. His Chetnik cap badge, with the white rose of Serbia, marked him out as a terrorist in German eyes, and he was taken to Belgrade where he was tortured by the Gestapo for many months.

While held in solitary confinement with the sounds of torture and executions around him, he was sustained by a message slipped into his cell by a fellow prisoner. Written in Polish in the prisoner's own blood, the note, which came wrapped round a rusty nail, was for long Hargreaves's only possession. Although he could not understand the words he sensed their meaning which turned out to be: "There is not enough darkness in the world to put out the light of one small candle."

When he was moved to Berlin Hargreaves feared that he would be shot, "while trying to escape" on the long train journey, but he was delivered straight to the sick-bay of Colditz Castle. The PoW camp was hardly the best place to be in the winter of 1944, but although conditions were hard, they seemed "sheer bliss" after his earlier experiences.

Edgar Charles Stewart Hargreaves was born at Christchurch, New Zealand, on September 7 1917. Educated at St Andrew's College, where he was pipe major in the school band, he started to participate in air shows at the age of 15, standing on the wings of a biplane and finishing off the performance by parachuting into the crowd.

Meanwhile he had qualified for a pilot's certificate of competence - the nearest thing to a pilot's licence for a youth not yet 18.

With a contingent of young New Zealanders, Hargreaves travelled to Britain to volunteer for the RAF. But on failing the eye test for aircrew, he opted instead to join the Army, and was commissioned into the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars. He was on leave in New Zealand at the declaration of war, and was posted to Northern Ireland with the North Irish Horse.

When he saw the film Waterloo Bridge, he particularly admired a Mauser pistol with a wooden holster that could be used as a stock. On telling his troop sergeant, he was driven into the hills where the sergeant dug up a box of German munitions, which included an identical pistol; he presented it to Hargreaves, who took it to Yugoslavia.

Finding conventional soldiering dull, Hargreaves volunteered for the Parachute regiment which was forming in Cheshire, and qualified as an instructor. Since he was shortsighted a local paper did a story with the headline "Monocled Man Leads Skytroops". Hargreaves kept a cutting of this, and would produce it when his comrades' spirits were low.

On being posted to the Middle East, Hargreaves was recruited to SOE by James Klugmann, the former Communist Party secretary at Cambridge, who is thought to have played an important part in the British switch to Tito.

Emerging from Colditz in 1945, Hargreaves was brought to England and assigned to another compound at Brize Norton where he met his fellow New Zealander the double VC-winner Charles Upham. The two men took one look at the barbed wire, and walked out. They went to the Ritz, where lack of ready cash was no problem.

After serving for another year with SOE in the Far East, Hargreaves became comptroller to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, which was being opened to the public. The job enabled him to indulge his love of animals, and the 200 wild animals roaming the grounds were soon joined by his pet chimpanzee, which had proved too boisterous for a London flat.

He was a keen supporter of the new sport of hot-air ballooning but was less enthused about collecting rent from the many nudist conventions at Woburn - a duty he always performed immaculately dressed. Hargreaves then became a Queen's Messenger and later Bursar at Heathfield School, where he met and married the young headmistress Dawn Mackay. They moved to Hatchlands, in Surrey, to open a college providing courses for girls of many nationalities who had just left school.

When Hatchlands was no longer available they moved to Aultmore in Speyside where they continued to provide an enriching experience to a wide variety of pupils before finally retiring. In later years he took up bungee-jumping.

Charles Hargreaves is survived by his widow and two sons from a previous marriage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../08/db0802.xml

Op Telic: In Memorium.

Respect to Scottie. Never knew he was a D Day veteran.

James Doohan
(Filed: 21/07/2005)

James Doohan, who died yesterday aged 85, played Scotty, chief engineer of the USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek television series and films; he was at the receiving end of one the screen's most famous injunctions, "Beam me up, Scotty," whenever a member of his crew needed to be re-materialised in the spacecraft.

Microsoft

As a character actor who had spent his early years in radio, building a reputation for mastering dialects, Doohan was auditioned for a role as an engineer for the new NBC television series in 1966.

He offered a number of different accents, and the producers asked him which he preferred. Doohan opted for Scots, because "all the world's best engineers have been Scottish". The result might have passed muster in the United States, but when Scotty would insist to Captain Kirk (William Shatner) that "You cannae change the laws of physics", the delivery would have fooled no one north of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Nonetheless, his character (Montgomery Scott) was a success and also inspired a generation of young engineers - the Milwaukee School of Engineering even invested Doohan with an honorary doctorate.

James Montgomery Doohan was born on March 3 1920 in Vancouver, and was brought up there and in Ontario. His father was an alcoholic, and James left home at 19 to go to war.

As a captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery, he led his men into battle on Juno Beach on D-Day, helping to secure a field and establish command posts. That night, however, Doohan was hit by machine-gun fire, taking four bullets in the leg and three in the middle finger of his right hand; he lost the finger, and an eighth bullet hit him in the chest - but he was saved by the sterling silver cigarette case in his pocket. For the remainder of the war Doohan served as a pilot observer.

After returning to Canada, Doohan performed on local radio before winning a two-year scholarship in 1946 to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. He then worked consistently in radio and television, as well as on stage and in films, in both America and Canada. He eventually gravitated to Hollywood, landing parts in many films and television series, including The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Fantasy Island.

When the Star Trek series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott. He appeared in five Star Trek films (he devised the Vulcan and Klingon languages for Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and forged another career as a public speaker, addressing campuses throughout the United States and Canada. He also appeared at Star Trek conventions.

As his health began to fail in recent years, Doohan denied rumours that he had Alzheimer's disease, saying: "If I had Alzheimer's, I think I'd remember." He made his final convention appearance last year, in Los Angeles, when he was also honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Doohan's first marriage to Janet Young produced four children, and he had two by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading

.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../21/db2101.xml

Major-General R.C. Macdonald
Inspired infantry leader who won two DSOs in the fierce battles of the Normandy and Rhineland campaigns

(From The Times, 29 July 2005 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...712334,00.html))

“Mac Macdonald commanded three different infantry battalions in the battles from the Normandy beachhead to the crossing of the Rhine and beyond. In a period when the casualty rate might result in a unit having three commanding officers within so many weeks, it was remarkable that he survived unscathed, winning two DSOs in the process.

He was an officer of unusual calm and good humour. These qualities served him well when he became Military Assistant to Field Marshal Montgomery after the war.

Ronald Clarence Macdonald was a sixth-generation grandson of Flora Macdonald, who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape capture after his defeat at the battle of Culloden in 1746. He was born in 1911 in Quetta where his father, Colonel C. R. Macdonald, was serving with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment before the First World War. He was educated at Rugby and RMC Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshires in 1931.

The early years of the war were spent in a variety of regimental and staff appointments in England but he landed in Normandy in June 1944 as second-in-command of the 1st/6th South Staffordshires with the 59th Infantry Division, which played a key role in taking Caen in early July. A month later he was in command of the battalion during the battle for the ridge overlooking Thury-Harcourt, in the centre of the line held by the Fifth Panzer Army, after the German withdrawal to the line of the Orne south of Caen.

The ridge was under close enemy observation, and two of Macdonald’s companies were subjected to intense mortar fire as they formed up for the attack. He went forward at once to effect an immediate reorganisation to take account of the casualties, and he led his battalion forward to seize all their objectives. The enemy counter-attacked several times with increasing ferocity next day. But Macdonald was everywhere on the hill, urging his men to hang on, which they did until the enemy withdrew at nightfall. He received an immediate DSO for his outstanding leadership and determination.

He continued in command of 1st/6th South Staffordshires until they were disbanded to provide reinforcements for other battalions in November 1944, when he was appointed CO of the 1st Kings Own Scottish Borderers in the 3rd Division, leading them from the Maas through the gruelling battles for the Rhineland. Then, in March 1945 when the British and American Armies were poised for the Rhine crossing, he took over the 2nd Battalion of his own regiment, also in the 3rd Division.

His battalion crossed the Rhine on March 29 and, having passed through the town of Rees, fought their way forward through Lingen against the determined and highly professional troops of the Grossdeutschland Brandenburg Regiment. A further series of actions, fiercely fought by both sides, eventually saw Macdonald’s battalion on the outskirts of Bremen by April 16. He was awarded a Bar to his DSO for his skilled and highly successful third period in command.

At the end of the war in Europe Macdonald took the 2nd Royal Warwickshires to Palestine, where the situation was becoming increasingly difficult with immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe, which the Arab population bitterly opposed. After spending the winter in Jerusalem, he was recalled to London to become Military Assistant to the new CIGS, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, who was Colonel of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He not only survived this exacting duty but continued in the post with Sir William Slim when he succeded Montgomery in 1948.

After service on the staff in the Gold Coast, soon to become Ghana, he was appointed to his fourth battalion command — the 1st Battalion of his own regiment about to embark for Korea. Active operations in this bitterly fought war ceased on July 27, 1953, just before they reached Pusan, but the battalion remained to help to garrison the ceasefire line for the following year.

Macdonald subsequently commanded 10th Infantry Brigade Group in Lüneburg with the Army of the Rhine and in 1960 became Chief of Staff British Forces Arabian Peninsula. He was promoted major- general in 1962 and appointed Deputy Chief of Staff Allied Land Forces Central Europe in Fontainebleau, from which he retired from the Army in 1965.

In 1967 he became farm manager for Griffin Farms, a leading egg-producing concern and remained a non- executive director of the company after giving up active participation in 1974.

He was Colonel of the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers, which his regiment had been retitled, from 1963 to 1968, and, from 1968 to 1974, Deputy Colonel (Warwicks) of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

He married in 1939 Jessie Ross Anderson, who died in 1986. He married in 1986 Constance Margaret Davies, the widow of Air Commodore Wilfred Owen Davies. He is survived by his second wife, by a son of his first marriage and by a stepson. A daughter of his first marriage predeceased him.

Major-General R. C. Macdonald, CB, DSO and Bar, OBE, Deputy Chief of Staff Allied Land Forces Central Europe, 1962-65, was born on August 1, 1911. He died on July 28, 2005, aged 93.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../11/db1103.xml

Brian Calvert
(Filed: 11/08/2005)

Brian Calvert, who has died aged 72, was interned in China by the Japanese in the Second World War, and later played an important role in introducing the supersonic airliner Concorde, with which he fell deeply in love.

For him, Concorde was a lady, climbing like a lovesick angel. Pilots wanted to fly and to see her at the same time, he declared. She expanded and contracted, flexed like a fly-fishing rod, and flew at Mach 2. Calvert carried out the plane's acceptance trial, and went on to develop the pilot operating procedures. As the flight manager with specific responsibility for technical matters, he was involved in the complicated and protracted negotiations with foreign governments for landing rights. In due course, he carried out acceptance trials and inaugurated several new routes, thus successfully bringing the new aircraft into service.

But he was philosophical when news broke that the plane was to be taken out of service, recognising that its existence depended upon results, and that the Paris crash in July 2000 and the New York terrorist attacks in September 2001 made the aircraft no longer commercially viable.

Brian James Calvert was born on June 15 1933 at Hankow on the Yangste. His father worked for Vestey's, and the family was living in the British concession at Tientsin when the Japanese interned some 1,800 civilians of various nationalities at Weihsin in Shantung province. Some of his fellow internees were expatriates who had been teaching at Peking University, and young Brian received such a sound education that, after returning to England in 1945, he won a place to Stowe.

When he earned praise for his performance as Hamlet in a school play from Laurence Olivier, who was in the audience, he thought of becoming an actor. But he undertook his national service in the Royal Navy. Selected for upperyardman, he was one of the last ratings to be trained as a pilot, flying the Mark 17 Seafire, the Firefly and the ungainly Gannet, whose round contours would contrast with the sharper Concorde.

As an RNVR pilot in the Channel Air Division, based at Ford, Sussex, he indulged his love of flying in considerably less restrained style than he was to do as a civil pilot. Flying in 1840 Naval Air Squadron, he helped to win the Kemsley trophy for the top anti-submarine air squadron.

After national service, Calvert joined P&O as an assistant purser, undertaking two voyages to Australia and one to the North West Pacific; but he was bored keeping passengers entertained and finding their luggage. When he tried high-street banking and announced to his branch manager that he was not cut out for the job, "there was a mutual sigh of relief".

Then, in 1957, Calvert joined the airline industry after seeing an advertisement by BOAC for aircrew. For the first two years he was a navigator until qualifying as a pilot again to fly the Stratocruiser, Britannia, Comet IV, VC-10 and the Boeing 747. He first became involved in the introduction into service of new aircraft and avionics when, in 1966, he joined BOAC's flight development unit, where he had a significant influence on aircraft design. Calvert was the author of Flying Concorde: the Full Story (1981).

In 1985 he retired from British Airways to work for Hunting Aviation. There he accepted the challenge of transferring new technology from the defence industry to the calibration of airfield navigational aids. He eventually produced a remarkably efficient and competitively priced solution in the shape of a fully equipped small twin-engine aircraft, able to meet very stringent CAA requirements; it delighted many airfield operators intent on reducing airfield operating costs.

Calvert settled into village life at Ashhampstead, Berks, under Concorde's flight path. An idyllic day for him would be to take family and friends to the Beetle and Wedge at Moulsford in his dinghy, which he called "the Berkshire navy". When charter flights for Concorde were mooted, Calvert ensured the first passengers were his local's regulars.

He won the Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators' Brackley Trophy in 1977 for his outstanding contribution to commercial flying, and served as president of the Royal Institute of Navigation from 1981 to 1984.

Brian Calvert, who died on July 16, married, in 1958, Elizabeth Russell Dodd. After their divorce, he married, secondly, the novelist, anthologist and toy designer Mary Danby, who survives him with his two sons and a daughter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../10/db1001.xml

Air Commodore 'Rex' Boxer
(Filed: 10/08/2005)

Air Commodore 'Rex' Boxer, who has died aged 90, was one of the four-strong team of pilots that gave the RAF's most celebrated pre-war aerobatic displays, notably at the Hendon Air Pageant of 1937.



Boxer had joined No 1 Squadron in July 1935 to fly that graceful bi-plane fighter the Fury. By the spring of 1937 he was one of the most experienced pilots in the squadron, when his flight commander, Flight Lieutenant Teddy Donaldson, obtained the CO's approval to form a four-man aerobatic team. He selected Boxer to be his deputy.

The aircraft of previous aerobatic teams had been tied together to create a spectacle for the spectators, but this inevitably restricted each aircraft's movement. Donaldson - who later rose to air commodore and became air correspondent of The Daily Telegraph - dispensed with the practice, so enabling the individual pilots in his team to manoeuvre and change positions during a display.

After an intensive period of training, the team appeared at Hendon in 1937, when King George VI became the first reigning sovereign to attend the pageant. Donaldson and his team of young pilots were the stars of the show, and won a rare standing ovation from the crowd. Following an aerobatic competition with other crack squadrons, No 1 was selected to represent the RAF at the International Aviation Meeting at Zurich, the first time the Air Ministry had authorised an RAF unit to represent Britain at a major international meeting on the Continent. With participating German and Italian teams anxious to display their skills and to best the RAF, the Zurich meeting had, as things turned out, the added significance of taking place just two years before Europe was plunged into war.

The British team arrived at Dubendorf airfield on July 25 1937 and had one day in which to practise. Throughout the following week they thrilled the crowds and even attracted admiring comments from their rivals. General Milch, then the Luftwaffe chief of staff, told Boxer that he had never seen flying like it.

As the week neared its climax, the opposition became increasingly daring in attempts to outshine the RAF team; Italy's crack squadron of "stunning bachelors" was particularly bold. When, on the final Sunday, the weather threatened the event, the Italians, determined to provide the grand finale, approached Donaldson and asked to exchange their allocated mid-afternoon slot for the RAF's later one.

Donaldson agreed and, contending with a low cloud base and heavy rain, he and his four pilots put on an outstanding display, in spite of the rain beating against their goggles and windscreens. They landed as it became even heavier - to tumultuous applause given to no other act. The adverse weather then forced the cancellation of the remainder of the show, much to the great consternation of the stunning bachelors. "The Italians," as Boxer commented, "lost out."

The RAF pilots received a huge reception on their return to Tangmere, near Chichester, and were much praised by the British press. At a time of considerable expansion of the RAF, the team's success reflected great credit on the service and increased British prestige.

Henry Everard Crichton Boxer, always known as Rex, was born on July 28 1914 at Hardingstone, Northampton, the son of Rear-Admiral Henry Boxer. He was educated at Shrewsbury, where he excelled at athletics, soccer and rowing and was captain of the boat that won the Lady's Plate at Henley.

In 1933 Boxer entered the RAF College, Cranwell. He was awarded the Sword of Honour as the outstanding flight cadet, just pipping his friend Peter Townsend, who was to win renown in the Battle of Britain. Having gained his wings, Boxer - along with Townsend - joined No 1 Squadron at Tangmere.

In October 1938 he became a flying instructor at No 1 Flying Training School, where he specialised in teaching landings on aircraft carriers. The following year he attended the first wartime Specialist Navigation Course at the School of Air Navigation.

With aircraft operating over ever-increasing ranges, accurate navigation was of paramount importance. With the navigator aircrew branch in its infancy, it fell to a small, select group of pilots, who had specialised in the art, to create and develop a huge expansion plan for the training of navigators and the opening of schools to meet the rapidly increasing requirements of the bomber and maritime squadrons.

In June 1942 Boxer left for South Africa, where many flying training schools had been formed as part of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. After 18 months as the chief instructor at two air schools specialising in navigator training, he returned to be the senior navigation instructor at No 7 (Operational) Advanced Flying Unit, where recently qualified pilots and navigators attended before joining operational squadrons.

In late 1944 he returned to operational duties with No 180 Squadron, flying Mitchell light bombers with the Second Tactical Air Force in Belgium. After a period at the Air Ministry as the Director of Navigation, Boxer left for Washington as a member of the British Joint Military Staff with specific responsibility for navigation systems and policy.

He returned to Britain in February 1949, as a member of the directing staff at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell. He then attended the National Defence College in Ottawa, Canada, as the RAF representative.

Promoted to group captain in August 1953, Boxer returned to the Air Ministry as the deputy director of Navigation Training at a time when many RAF navigators were trained in Canada under a Nato training plan. This was followed by his appointment in June 1956 as CO of Thorney Island near Portsmouth, home of No 2 Air Navigation School. For the duration of this appointment he was appointed an ADC to the Queen.

After completing the Imperial Defence College course Boxer returned to Canada as the Senior Air Liaison Officer and Air Advisor to the High Commissioner.

In 1962 he was appointed the Air Officer Administration at Headquarters Coastal Command and in 1965 he became the Director of Personnel (Air), with responsibility for the career management and appointments of all officer and airmen aircrew.

After retiring from the RAF in 1967, Boxer was appointed as the Counsellor (Defence Equipment) at the British High Commission in Ottawa. He and his family developed a deep affection for Canada and his children considered it to be their second home; one son remained to join the Canadian air force.

Boxer managed to extend his three year appointment to seven years, which was quite an achievement as the United Kingdom had little equipment to sell the Canadians who, in any case, tended to spend what little money they had on American equipment.

Boxer was an excellent conjuror and for some time a member of the Magic Circle. He was also an accomplished sketcher and writer. He enjoyed the outdoor life and was a keen fisherman and sailor.

He was appointed OBE in 1948 and CB in 1965.

Rex Boxer died on July 13.

He married, in 1938, Enid Collyns, who died in 1994, and is survived by two sons and a daughter; another daughter predeceased him.

Major Tom Allen
(Filed: 09/08/2005)

Major Tom Allen, who has died aged 87, won an MC with the Gurkhas in Italy in 1943 and, after the war, devoted himself to philanthropic projects in Nepal.

On the night of November 27 1943, the 1st Battalion 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), part of 17th Indian Infantry Brigade, 8th Indian Division, advanced in heavy rain on the village of Mozzagrogna, north of the River Sangro, Italy.

When the artillery barrage was lifted, the Germans emerged from their underground positions and raked the forward slopes up which the Gurkhas were scrambling, sliding and slithering as they did so.

Allen, then a captain, was in command of one of the two leading companies in the attack. They broke through the enemy defences but the Germans fought back fiercely and turned each house into a strong-point. By midnight, his company held part of the village but he was then wounded during a fierce counter-attack.

When the commander of the other forward company was also wounded, Allen took command of both and organised the defence of the village. He was wounded again during successive counter-attacks but he stayed at his post, encouraging his men and sending back vital reports.

Two companies of 1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers (1RF) were ordered in to support the Gurkhas and parties of both battalions soon found themselves under siege from enemy tanks, flame-throwers and snipers.

At first light, when their ammunition was almost exhausted, Allen undertook a hazardous journey through a part of the village that was still occupied by enemy snipers in order to replenish supplies. He refused to wait while his wounds were being dressed but instead led the relief party straight back to his men.

Shortly after 8 am, 1/5 RGR and 1RF were ordered to withdraw but some of the troops did not receive the order and a grim game of hide and seek began among the ruins of the village. Allen was twice wounded again before being evacuated. The citation for the award of an immediate MC paid tribute to the great personal courage that he had shown.

Tom James Whiteside Allen was born on March 1 1918 at Bearstead, Kent. His father, Brigadier-General Alfred Allen, was commissioned into the Buffs and fought in the Zulu War and on the North West Frontier.

Young Tom was educated at Malvern before going to the RMC Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in 1938 and posted to the 1st Battalion at Lahore.

He transferred the following year to 1/5 RGR and saw active service in West Iran and then in Italy. In 1947, when India achieved Independence, 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles remained part of the new Indian Army and Allen transferred to the 6th Gurkha Rifles (later 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles) and was subsequently posted to Penang, Malaysia, with the 1st Battalion.

Allen had two spells at the Gurkha Depot before moving to HQ Far East Land Forces. He retired from the Army in 1951 in the rank of major and settled in Penang.

During the next 40 years, Allen involved himself in many philanthropic projects in Nepal, supervising and financing them in person. These included road improvement and water storage schemes and building village schools and health centres.

In the years 1961 to 1965, Allen organised the planting of 8,000 trees at Baidichhap Kyakmi to prevent soil erosion. Seedlings were imported from Scotland and nurtured locally before being planted.

He returned to England in 1988 to settle in Kent and remained active until well into his eighties, swimming at least a mile every day.

Tom Allen died on June 19. He never married but he adopted three sons and brought them up as members of his family.

He educated them and they looked after him devotedly in his old age.

RIP Tom , Sapiens Qui Prospicit in arc sitam qvis occutablit

Major 'Jim' Almonds MM & bar

A founder member of the Special Air Service.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...746426,00.html

August 6, 1914 - August 20, 2005
Founder member of the SAS who blew up enemy aircraft in North Africa and sabotaged supply lines after D-Day
AS A sergeant with a troop of No 8 Commando in besieged Tobruk in 1941 “Gentleman Jim� Almonds was recruited by David Stirling with three companions to join “L� Detachment of the Special Air Service Brigade. Thus they became part of that elite group “the originals� of the SAS, as the brigade to which they supposedly belonged existed on paper only — a phantom to deceive Rommel about the 8th Army’s strength. L Detachment was to experiment with a new form of attack on his airfields and lines of communication — from the rear.

Stirling’s first operation against enemy airfields, by parachute, was a total failure, chiefly because atrocious weather resulted in the would-be saboteurs being dropped wide of their targets. Almonds did not take part as he was ordered by Stirling to remain at Kabrit, the SAS base near the Suez Canal, to complete construction of the parachute training towers. But when Stirling met the Long Range Desert Group on the way back from the failed operation he became convinced that parachuting into the desert was an inaccurate procedure and wasteful of his precious resources. He therefore joined up with the LRDG at Jalo, off the northwestern tip of the desert’s Great Sand Sea, for his next operation.

Almonds was accompanied by Captain Jock Lewes, formerly his troop leader in No 8 Commando, on the first operation the SAS undertook with the LRDG. The aim was to attack the enemy airfield at El Agheila, some 200 miles from Jalo on the Mediterranean coast. They found the airfield deserted but blew up a concentration of enemy ammunition vehicles at Mersa Brega, further west.

On Christmas Day 1941, Almonds again accompanied Lewes, this time in an attack on Nofilia airfield on the border between Libya and Tripolitania. The Luftwaffe foiled them again by flying all but two of a squadron of Ju87 Stukas off the strip before dark. The two Stukas were destroyed, but Lewes was killed in an enemy air attack as they set out for Jalo. Four of their five vehicles were burnt out and the fifth damaged.

Almonds took command, picked up two LRDG survivors who had become separated and set out for Jalo in the remaining truck. They covered most of the 200 miles by night, aided by a good moon and the vehicle headlights when negotiating the innumerable gullies. After an exhausting 48-hour drive they reached Jalo on New Year’s Day 1942.

Almonds received an immediate Military Medal for his part in the raid on Nofilia airfield and for his resourcefulness in getting his group of survivors back to Jalo. The citation had “Not to be published� scrawled across it to preserve the secrecy of the SAS operations. It was undated but the note “missing� below Almonds’s name indicates that Stirling submitted it after the subsequent successful attack on Sidi Haneish and the failed operation against Benghazi harbour.

In the Sidi Haneish raid 40 Ju52 transport aircraft were destroyed on the ground at the cost of only one SAS man killed, and the loss of two Jeeps.

In September Almonds was captured on the outskirts of Benghazi when his Jeep was hit in the petrol tank and burnt out at a roadblock on the approach to the town. As Rommel was shipping supplies through the port it was a key target, but Stirling had argued strongly against the SAS being used for such a large-scale operation.

After being driven round Benghazi in the back of a truck by his captors for the entertainment of the populace, Almonds was shipped to Italy and put in a camp near Taranto.

In a carefully rehearsed plan, he and three other prisoners working in the Red Cross food parcels store overcame, bound and gagged their three Italian guards and escaped from the camp through an upper window of the store. They remained free for two weeks but felt compelled to give themselves up when one of the group became so ill with pneumonia that they feared he would die. Sent back to the camp from which they had escaped, the four were informed that they would be tried by court martial for assaulting an Italian officer — for which the sentence was death.

Almonds was sent to a separate camp and held in solitary confinement for several months, during which time he occupied himself by designing and building a boat entirely in his mind. Allied landings on the toe of Italy in July 1943 brought an end to talk of a court martial, when all the prisoners were sent by train to a camp 300 miles north at Monturano.

On September 8 the Italian camp commander, who had also travelled north, informed Almonds that Italy was about to change to the Allied side and asked him to make a reconnaissance in civilian clothes of German positions around the nearby harbour. Almonds did so but, after reporting to the commandant by telephone, decided not to return.

He walked inland to the foothills of the Apennines before turning south towards the slowly advancing Allied forces. Having walked 300km, scavenging food as he went, he reached a US army forward patrol on October 14. In January 1944 he joined 1st SAS in Scotland, preparing for the invasion of Normandy. He was awarded a bar to his MM in recognition of his escape.

He went to Normandy as squadron sergeant-major of D Squadron 1st SAS to co-operate with the French resistance in sabotaging the German supply lines. After receiving their Jeeps and heavy weapons by airdrop, D Squadron wreaked havoc on enemy lines of communication through the Forest of Orleans. Almonds was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his part in this and was commissioned in September 1944. His final contribution to the Allied cause was to go with 1st SAS to Norway to assist in the apprehension of Quisling collaborators.

John Edward Almonds was born in Stixwould, Lincolnshire, the son of George Almonds, a smallholder. He became “Jim� after joining the Coldstream Guards, as there were too many Johns in his squad at Pirbright. The nickname “Gentleman Jim� originated at Tobruk because he never swore and his dugout was always immaculate — he liked to cite the old military maxim: “Any fool can be uncomfortable.�

His life after 1945 included secondment to the British Military Mission to Ethiopia, 1949-51, service with the Eritrean Police Field Force and a return to the SAS when it was reformed from the Malayan Scouts in 1952. He completed his military service in West Africa where he built the ketch he had half-designed in solitary confinement and sailed it home with two companions. He retired to the house where he was born in Stixwould.

His wife Iris May Lock, whom he married in 1939, predeceased him. He is survived by a son, who followed him into the SAS, and twin daughters who both served in the Army.

Major J. E. Almonds, MM and Bar, SAS officer, was born on August 6, 1914. He died on August 20, 2005, aged 91.