GOC Northern Ireland during the Troubles who won the MC in Italy in 1944 and later became Black Rod
David House was one of the group of talented Royal Green Jacket Officers who made their mark in the Army during the 1960s and 1970s with their high intelligence, lightness of touch and dedication to their profession.
Like all real professionals in any walk of life, he appeared to ascend the promotion ladder with effortless ease, disguising the painstaking hard work, thought and determination that he applied to everything he undertook. When he retired from the Army in 1977, he was appointed Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and Serjeant-at-Arms of the House of Lords, and Secretary to the Lord Great Chamberlain.
David George House was the son of A. G. House, and was educated at Regents Park School, London. He enlisted in 1940 and was commissioned into the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (60th Rifles) in August 1941 and served with 1st KRRC — an infantry motor battalion — during the Italian campaign.
He won the Military Cross as a subaltern commanding a platoon of lightly armoured Bren gun carriers in support of the tanks of the 9th Lancers in the fighting that followed the crossing of the River Conca in early September 1944. His platoon gave close support mounted in their carriers and then on foot in the face of heavy shelling and sniper fire, killing a number of the enemy and taking 20 prisoners — all without loss of a single man.
His abilities as a staff officer were first recognised in 1958 when he was appointed GSO 2 on the newly formed staff of the first Chief of Defence Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir William Dickson, who had been Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from 1955 until appointed CDS in 1957.
House was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1962, and commanded 1st Green Jackets (43rd & 52nd) towards the end of their time in Borneo during President Sukarno’s politically ill-judged armed “confrontation” with Malaysia from 1963 to 1966.
A subaltern who served in his battalion afterwards wrote: “I was in awe of this tall man who led us to maximum performance. When my platoon returned at dawn from a successful night ambush after three long wet nights, carrying our wounded and enemy dead, we were greeted by Colonel David. He spoke a kind word to every exhausted Rifleman and having listened to my debrief allowed a small group of us to go out again in the follow-up action. He radiated confidence and I had a huge respect for him.”
After taking his battalion to join the British Garrison in Berlin, he returned to Borneo towards the end of 1965 to command the 51st Gurkha Infantry Brigade still engaged in defending the territory against illegal Indonesian incursions. Subsequently he took over as Commander British Forces, Borneo, in the run-down of Commonwealth forces there on the successful conclusion of the campaign.
For his services in Malaysia, he was appointed OBE in 1964, mentioned in dispatches in 1965 and advanced to CBE in 1967.
His career took a dramatic turn in 1967 when he was appointed Head of the British Military Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS) with his headquarters in Potsdam, where diplomatic not jungle warfare skills were needed.
It was an exciting time to be involved in the Cold War in Europe. Nato was swinging away from its policy of massive nuclear retaliation to one of flexible response. In August 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush Alexander Dubcek’s “Prague Spring” which advocated a more liberal form of communism, thereby restoring what Moscow perceived as the Warsaw Pact’s defensive cohesion against the West and, incidentally, bringing East/West relations to the brink of war.
House returned from Berlin in 1969 to become Deputy Military Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, but by 1971 he was back in the Nato environment in his first major-general’s appointment as Chief of Staff, British Army of the Rhine, and was faced with the problems of providing units of all arms to support the urgently required higher force levels in Northern Ireland.
He became even more closely involved with tactics and equipment needed in the Province when he became Director of Infantry in 1973. He was, thus, well grounded in the military problems of Ulster before he was appointed GOC Northern Ireland in 1975.
His period as GOC was one of renewed hope and transition. When he arrived in Belfast, the IRA seemed to be abandoning terror in favour of political pressure; the women’s movement for peace was emerging as a short-lived political force; internment without trial was being phased out; proposals were being formulated in Whitehall for the progressive re-establishment of the primacy of the police, with the Army in a supporting role; and the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment were being expanded as quickly as recruiting and training would allow to relieve the over-stretch from which the Army was suffering.
House was a very different man from his two distinguished predecessors. He did not possess the political charisma and diplomatic skills of General Sir Harry Tuzo; nor was he a rugged plain soldier’s soldier like General Sir Frank King. Instead, he brought a quiet, patient determination to his task of effecting the gradual transition to police primacy, which started to become a reality in his time.
He experienced many frustrations, but he managed to resist the temptation of re-assuming military responsibility when setbacks occurred. As part of that policy, he adopted a low personal profile, avoiding the limelight and seldom appearing on television. In consequence, he was hardly known to the general public, either in Northern Ireland or at home, but he was highly regarded by the troops under his command for his direct, commonsense approach, realistic attitude to security issues and his dedication to their interests.
House was appointed KCB in 1975. When he left the Province in 1977 the Government’s appreciation of his work in Northern Ireland was demonstrated by his promotion to Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath, a most unusual distinction for a lieutenant-general.
As Black Rod in the House of Lords, he proved himself a popular choice. His wide interests, including a love of music, and his social abilities as a charming host and raconteur, were all appreciated, but he was also faced with the very real security responsibilities of the appointment after the IRA assassinated Airey Neave in 1979 by placing a bomb under his car while it was in the car park of the House of Commons.
The anti-terrorist precautions which House instituted became part of the accepted way of life in Westminster. He was appointed KCVO by the Queen on relinquishing the post of Black Rod in 1985.
He was Colonel Commandant of the Light Division, 1974-77, and of the Small Arms School Corps for the same period. He was also a director of Lloyds Bank (Yorkshire & Humberside), 1985-91.
He married Sheila Betty Darwin in 1947. She died in 2006, and he is survived by their two daughters.
Lieutenant-General Sir David House, GCB, KCVO, CBE, MC, GOC Northern Ireland, 1975-77, was born on August 8, 1922. He died on July 14, 2012, aged 89
âîäèòåëü ÐÀÔ, ïîòåðÿâøèé âçåíèå è îáå ðóêè â ÿïîíñêîì ïëåíó
RAF lorry driver who was blinded and lost both hands while a Japanese prisoner of war but went on to found his own haulage firm
Courage has many faces. At 21, Billy Griffiths was blinded, severely wounded in the leg and lost both his hands while a Japanese prisoner of war. Unable even to feed himself, there were moments when the burden he imposed on his fellow prisoners became almost unbearable, yet his will to survive prevailed.
An RAF truck driver, he had been evacuated from Singapore before the surrender to the Japanese 25th Army in February 1942 and shipped to Java, only to be taken prisoner on the capitulation of the Dutch East Indies. He received his injuries through the indifference of Japanese guards to their responsibilities for the lives of prisoners of war. Shortly after capture, he was one of about 220 prisoners ordered at bayonet point to clear ground beneath some camouflage netting. The guards stood away as the nets were moved and when Griffiths raised one edge, a violent explosion blinded him, pitted his face with bits of metal, blew off his hands and shattered his right leg.
At the Allied General Hospital, Bandung, run by Commonwealth and Dutch staff under Japanese control, the surgeon — Lieutenant-Colonel (later Sir Edward) “Weary” Dunlop of the Australian Auxiliary Medical Corps — put him on the operating table immediately. After two hours, during which he removed the remains of Griffiths’ eyes and tidied the stumps of his arms, he gave his leg only a 30-70 per cent chance of being saved.
The Dutch matron, “Mickey” Borgmann-Brouwer de Jonge, restored Griffiths’s will to live despite excruciating pain in the stumps of his arms. Confirmation that his leg would recover helped, as did the care of his fellow patients by feeding him and talking about England. Once able to stand, he forced himself to walk and, on discharge from hospital, two prisoners made him an artificial hand from two tin cans, with which he could feed himself with a spoon and hold a stick to find his way about the camp.
The darkness of three years of captivity, during which his jailers would often mock his disabilities, can only to be imagined. Yet release in 1945 brought new grief. Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, where his family ran a haulage business, he had delighted in his job as a lorry driver, married and had a daughter before being called up. He returned to find his wife gone, his daughter in the care of his wife’s sister and the business sold.
When his widowed mother found herself unable to care for him at home, he entered the St Dunstan’s unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire, where he was reunited with a friend from the Japanese prison camp and met Arthur Cavanagh who, similarly, had lost both eyes and hands, but in North Africa. After training to help to deal with his disabilities, he graduated to Ian Fraser House at Ovingdean on the South Downs, facing the sea. There the director, Air Commodore G. B. Dacre, gave him a fresh perspective by proposing he should set up a new haulage contracting business of his own.
Incredulous of the feasibility of such a prospect, his confidence grew when St Dunstan’s provided an expert to teach him business-management and book-keeping. He learnt to type using fittings to his stumps and dial the telephone with his tongue. St Dunstan’s offered a loan to buy the first lorry and his two younger brothers joined him.
The lorry was bought, inscribed with “Wm Griffiths” and ceremonially handed over to him by the mayors of Blackburn and Preston in February 1947. The company office was an adapted bedroom in his mother’s house and the company gradually made headway until the nationalisation of road haulage forced him to close down at the end of 1949.
Subsequently he met a prewar friend, Alice Jolly, who encouraged him to attend club concerts where she sang and to train his own baritone voice for an amateur competition. As a member of the Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association, he served as an honorary public relations and liaison officer for ten years, took part in sport for the disabled — being voted Disabled Sports Personality of the Year by the Sports Writers’ Association of Great Britain in 1969. He appeared on This Is Your Life, hosted by Eamonn Andrews, in 1972. He was appointed MBE for services to the community in 1977. His story, Blind to Misfortune, written with Hugh Popham, was republished by Pen and Sword in 2005.
He married Alice Jolly in 1962. She survives him with his stepson.
William Griffiths, MBE, Second World War veteran, was born on June 26, 1920. He died on July 20, 2012, aged 92
Ïèëîò-áîìáàðäèðîâùèê, ñäåëàâøèé 52 âûëåòà ñ Pathfinders è ïðèíèìàâøèé ó÷àñòèå â îêàçàíèè ïîìîùè æåðòâàì ãîëîäà â Íèäåðëàíäàõ â êîíöå âîéíû
Lancaster pilot who flew 52 sorties with the Pathfinders and played a part in famine relief to the Netherlands at the end of the war
Joining the RAF from an office job in Chatham Dockyard in 1942 as soon as he was old enough, Desmond Butters qualified as a bomber pilot and served two tours of operations on Lancasters with the Pathfinder Force from June 1944 until the end of the war. He won two DFCs for his skill as a pilot, as captain of a marker crew and as a Deputy Master Bomber. Remaining in the RAF after the war, Butters commanded a bomber squadron in the early 1950s, later transferring for medical reasons to the Supply Branch, where he served until the early 1970s.
Desmond James Butters was born in 1922. After finishing school he joined the Civil Service in the Admiralty in early 1940 and was posted to Chatham Dockyard where he worked on the staff of the manager of the engineering department. Volunteering for the RAF in September 1942, he gained his pilot’s wings in Canada, before returning to the UK in 1943 to convert to twin and then four-engined bombers.
In May 1944 he joined 7 Squadron, PFF, at RAF Oakington, Cambridgeshire. No 7 had been one of the first squadrons to join the Pathfinders when the force was formed in the autumn of 1942, and was to continue on PFF operations until almost the end of the war. Butters flew 52 sorties over Germany and German occupied Europe, as captain of a marker crew, laying down flares for the main force of bombers to aim at, and later as a deputy master bomber.
At the age of 22 he was sometimes guiding a force of up to 300 bombers to the target, remaining in the area giving instructions to successive waves of attacking aircraft throughout the duration of the raid. His first DFC, awarded in March 1945, cited his “skill, fortitude and devotion to duty”; his second was gazetted after the end of the war.
As the war drew towards its close it became apparent that the harsh winter of 1944-45, combined with widespread dislocation and destruction, in which the retreating German army destroyed locks and bridges to flood the country, was causing a famine among the population of the western Netherlands which had not yet been liberated by the Allies. From April 28 until May 5, bombers of the RAF, were deployed on Operation Manna to drop food to the starving Dutch. With their expertise in selecting drop zones and flare-marking techniques PFF pilots were ideal for this task.
A further mercy mission, on VE Day itself, was Operation Exodus, the repatriation of PoWs. Butters flew to Brussels and airlifted home 24 British PoWs who had between captured at Dunkirk in June 1940.
After the end of the war in Europe he commanded a staging post unit in India, commanded 12 squadron, flying Lincoln bombers, and served as an instructor with the Rhodesian Air Training Group. In 1955 he transferred to the Supply Branch, retiring after a final appointment in Strike Command, in 1973.
His wife, Alvis, whom he had married in 1943 when she was serving in the WAAF, died just 17 days before he did. He is survived by their son, whom they adopted in 1949.
Squadron Leader Desmond Butters, DFC and Bar, wartime bomber pilot, was born on July 19, 1922. He died on June 18, 2012 aged 89
Âîæäü ýôèîïñêèõ ìÿòåæíèêîâ, çàõâàòèâøèé âëàñòü â 1991 ãîäó
Ethiopian leader who overhauled his country’s institutions and earned plaudits from western aid donors as his regime became more repressive
Meles Zenawi was the former rebel leader who became the undisputed ruler of Ethiopia after the overthrow of the dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, in 1991. He dominated politics there and, to a large extent, in the region for the next two decades.
His years of leadership left Ethopia richer but not more stable. There were gains in education, in the status of women, in economic output and in the development of civil institutions. At the same time, as his critics noted, his government became no less repressive than the regime it originally ousted.
Sharp-witted, charismatic but also introspective, Meles was unusual in the extent to which he divided opinions between those who saw him as an African visionary and those who saw him as an African despot. In truth, there were elements of both.
Presiding over one of the poorest countries in Africa, Meles, a the one-time hard-line communist, overhauled Ethiopia’s backward political structure and liberalised the economy, reducing its crippling debt burden and reliance on foreign aid. He also became an articulate champion of the continent’s economic and environmental rights. In the process, he charmed donors and foreign governments who lauded him as one of the breed of young leaders who would spearhead a new beginning for the African continent.
Meles was highly regarded by Tony Blair who chose him as an African representative on the then Prime Minister’s Commission for Africa. Bill Clinton, as president, called him “a Renaissance man”.
The detractors, of which there were a growing number, saw another side to the diminutive Ethiopian leader with the characteristic goatee beard and arched eyebrows. To them, Meles was one of Africa’s worst human rights predators who used the fight against terrorism as a cover to silence peaceful voices of dissent within Ethiopia. The brutal suppression of opposition protests after disputed elections in May, 2005, in which nearly 40 people were reportedly killed, recalled the excesses of previous ruthless Ethiopian autocrats.
The US, in particular, persisted in seeing Meles, with his commitment to defeating Islamist insurgents, as a source of regional stability. Others pointed out that after overseeing the independence of neighbouring Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993, Meles resorted to war at the end of that decades leaving tens of thousands dead.
His decision in 2006 to invade Ethiopia’s long-time foe, Somalia, to crush an Islamist regime was also only a temporary success and arguably prompted the emergence of more extreme Islamist groups allied to al-Qaeda and the further disintegration of the Somali state.
Meles Zenawi was born in 1955, in the town of Adwa in the northern region of Tigray. He was educated at secondary school in the capital, Addis Ababa, before joining the medical faculty at Addis University in 1972. But three years later he abandoned his studies to join the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) at the start of its armed struggle against the Derg, or military junta of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Mengistu’s regime was a brutal Marxist dictatorship which had itself replaced the feudal rule of Emperor Haile Selassie. But the TPLF was also hard-line communist in outlook and saw Enver Hoxha’s isolationist Albania as a model state. Observers joked that when the rebels captured towns from Mengistu’s Marxist regime, the portraits of Marx and Lenin in government offices would be taken down, only to be replaced by larger ones. Meles, at this time, was an enthusiastic communist and was soon one of the TPLF’s most active and prominent cadres.
On the rebel group’s ruling executive committee by 1983, by the end of the 1980s Meles was not only the leader of the TPLF but also chairman of the broader Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) of which it was part. In May 1991 the forces of the EPRDF swept down from the Tigrayan highlands and entered Addis Ababa, as Mengistu’s demoralised forces melted away. Meles arrived in the capital a few days later and was soon named president of the transitional authority of Ethiopia and chairman of the country’s interim parliament.
In power, Meles was pragmatic enough to realise that, after the collapse of communism in its European heartland, there was little future for dogmatic socialism. Instead he promised an open, democratic system and to replace Mengistu’s centralism with a type of “ethnic federalism” which respected Ethiopia’s diverse regional make-up. The pragmatism was extended to Eritrea, which was allowed to become independent in 1993, even though Ethiopia became a land-locked nation as a result. The deal had been built upon Meles’ good personal relationship at the time with his Eritrean counterpart, Isaias Afewerki: they were said to be distantly related and their respective rebel groups had fought together to bring down Mengistu.
Nevertheless, within five years open hostilities had broken out between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Tension had been building over Ethiopian access to the Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab and over trade issues when a border dispute around the town of Badme erupted into fighting. The conflict lasted nearly two years and left tens of thousands of soldiers dead before a peace deal in June, 2000 led to the establishment of a security zone, policed by the United Nations, separating the two countries. Meles’ relationship with the Eritrean leader had also been destroyed.
The war with Eritrea was also a blow to the image Meles had been promoting of himself as an African statesman. He had served as chairman of the Organisation of African Union (later the African Union) from June 1995 to June 1996, and later became actively involved in efforts to end conflicts in Sudan and Somalia and in African initiatives to resolve the crisis in Burundi.
Eritrea also had an effect on Meles’ position at home. He had been elected Prime Minister for the first time in August, 1995, and his unchallenged authority seemed confirmed by his re-election five years later. But the outcome of the Eritrean war provoked a power struggle within the dominant TPLF.
Several senior members of the central committee accused Meles of having been “too soft” with Eritrea while others opposed some of his progressive reforms. The split was the most serious challenge to Meles’ leadership and he only narrowly survived. The same year, 2001, also witnessed the worst disturbances in Addis Ababa since Meles had come to power with more than 30 people killed in rioting led by students.
Meles responded to these setbacks by determining to broaden his political base at home and, as the leader of the biggest and most powerful country in the Horn of Africa, forging closer alliances with the West, particularly in the light of the American-led “war on terror”. The reward was vital support from the IMF in coping with Ethiopia’s high dependence on external donor funding and a resumption of aid from the World Bank, suspended during the war with Eritrea.
Ethiopia then became one of the 18 countries to benefit first from the debt-relief package agreed at the Group of Eight meeting in Edinburgh in 2005 when it was deemed to have passed tests on democratic performance, administrative competence and vigilance on corruption.
This endorsement of Meles Zenawi’s rule seemed vindicated by the election of 2005 which was vigorously contested by a range of political parties and described by some international observers as the fairest poll the country had ever seen. However, the heavy-handed reaction of Meles’ security forces to the protests which followed posed a question about the true nature of the regime.
Up to 40 people were killed after police were reported to have fired into crowds of demonstrators; hundreds more were arrested and held at secret detention centres. The violence had been sparked off by the release of preliminary results showing a government majority in the new parliament. Meles’ refusal to criticise the security forces deepened the political crisis as the main opposition groups demanded the formation of a national unity government to end the impasse. In a big blow to Meles, Western donors cut direct act in protest at the political repression.
The election debacle showed that Meles and his supporters had lost much of the popular backing they had enjoyed since ousting Mengistu in 1991. Rapid population growth, together with limited employment prospects and endemic poverty had created a dangerous cocktail. Meles’s response to the situation was to intensify the crackdown on dissent. According to the opposition, tens of thousands of young people were still being held in detention camps long after the 2005 election and Ethiopia gained a reputation for jailing journalists.
Meles was able to deflect attention from his domestic rule by exploiting international concern over developments in neighbouring Somalia. By the summer of 2006, an Islamist movement, loosely modelled on the Taleban, had taken control of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and most of the south of the country.
For Meles, this was unacceptable for two reasons: first, he feared the emergence of an expansionist Islamic state on Ethiopia’s borders and secondly, the Somali Islamists were sponsored by Eritrea, with whom relations had again deteriorated sharply.
The long-awaited offensive came on December 24, 2006, when Ethiopian aircraft bombed Mogadishu airport and Islamist strongholds. Within three days the Ethiopians had captured the Somali capital, installing the transitional government in power. Within a few more days, they had driven the Islamists out of the country altogether. The operation received the open encouragement of the US, which accused the Islamists of harbouring al-Qaeda suspects involved in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
For a while, Meles’s Somali adventure reaped dividends. Ethiopia was confirmed as one of Washington’s “top strategic partners” in Africa. Britain and other Western donors followed the US in restoring much of the development aid which had been cut because of concern over Meles’s human rights record. But success in Somalia was shortlived. By the end of 2008 radicalised and resurgent Islamists were back in control of most of the south of the country. In the face of bitter guerrilla attacks, Ethiopia pulled out its troops in 2009 with little evident gain from the whole enterprise. The intensification of a long-running insurgency by ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region added to Meles’s embarrassment.
A further worsening in relations with Eritrea added to the sense of an embattled Ethiopia. In 2011 Meles accused Eritrea of sending agents to plant bombs in Ethiopia and for the first time he declared that he would back rebel groups fighting to bring down the Eritrean government. In early 2012 Ethiopian forces carried out attacks inside south-east Eritrea, alleging that subversive groups were being trained there.
On the face of it, his popularity at home was unaffected as the ruling party won a huge majority in elections in 2010, giving Meles a fourth term as prime minister. But the conduct of the poll had fallen short of democratic standards and human rights groups were soon accusing the government of carrying out the biggest crackdown on dissent in years. Meles’s supporters, in dismissing the critics, pointed to continued sustained economic growth, substantial Chinese-backed building projects, including provision of much needed housing and a significant reduction in child mortality. Foreign donors, on the whole, also felt that Meles was spending their money relatively wisely.
Speculation about Meles Zenawi’s health began when he missed an African Union summit in Addis Ababa in July, 2012. He was later reported to be receiving hospital treatment in Brussels; the government denied reports that he was seriously ill.
He was married to Azeb Mesfin, a former rebel colleague, with whom he had three daughters.
Meles Zenawi, Ethiopian politician, was born on May 8, 1955. He died on August 20, 2012, aged 57
