Lhasa, 1950: Zvansov, second from left, with the Russian refugee Dmitri Nedbailoff, far left, and Heinrich Harrer, far right. The others are Tibetan officials.
Wartime fugitive from Soviet Samarkand who spent nine years on a terrifying journey to freedom
Vasili Zvansov was a Russian who deserted from the Red Army to seek freedom from Stalinism. After extraordinary adventures — including a chaotic CIA expedition to Tibet — he managed to make his way across the blanks on the maps of Central Asia to India and ultimately to the US.
Vasili Zvansov was born in 1923 in a village near Lake Zaysan, south of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. His parents, wealthy kulaks, had their assets seized by the Soviet Russians who imprisoned his father and ejected the family from their home in winter.
At 17 Zvansov was drafted into the Red Army. After some months he and a friend, Nikolai Kibardin, deserted. Leaving Samarkand in Uzbekistan they headed for Ayaguz, 750 miles to the northeast. It took several months walking at night, guided by the stars, and hiding by day. En route they had to cross the River Syr Darya and stole a rowing boat: “Paddling in an all-night merry-go-round through reeds in vast shallows we got lost, until at dawn we saw open water and crossed next night,” Zvansov recalled. “When we hit shore we had to fight off fierce dogs; this scared the ferry guard so much that we managed to run off.”
Once home they learnt that Zvansov’s father had escaped from jail and fled east to Chinese Sinkiang, so in September 1941 the pair followed him. Again travelling by night they headed to the border with Mongolia in the lightly guarded Altai Mountains some 250 miles south.
“I knew that area; a teacher of mine had transferred there and I had once visited,” Zvansov said.
They crossed the border at a river but on reaching the nearest town, desperate for food, they were immediately caught by the Chinese Nationalist Army. “We got lucky — just as we arrived Chiang Kai-shek declared Chinese control. Happily, they searched for and found my father for me.”
In 1942 General Omar Ma of the Chinese Nationalist Army recruited Zvansov into a group of 150 anti-communist White Russians, known as the Eskadrone (squadron). Two years later a Soviet-backed “Red Brigade” drove the Chinese out of Sinkiang and set up a short-lived puppet state, the Eastern Turkestan Republic (its ulterior motive was to control the local uranium mines). The area was then liberated by Osman Bator, a Kazakh aristocrat who had joined the Chinese Nationalists.
“We joined him,” Zvansov said, “but the Soviets drove us out again in 1947, to Ku-chöng near Urumchi. It was hard; very dangerous; how to save our lives? I deserted again.”
Shortly afterwards Zvansov met General Ma who warned him that his Nationalist Army was capitulating to Mao’s communists who were invading the province. Fearing that Zvansov would be killed, he gave him a Tupalov pistol and advised him to flee to India. To help Zvansov, he found work for him at the US Consulate in Urumchi. Zvansov was introduced to the vice-consul, Douglas Mackiernan, who combined his official duties with his activities as a CIA officer. This included spying on the Russian-run mines, whose workers told Zvansov they were digging uranium.
On one occasion Zvansov and Mackiernan drove a load of wooden crates to the Russian border where they buried them. “I was told they were radios which we would recover if we ever returned,” Zvansov said. In fact they were seismographs and Geiger counters for monitoring the detonation of Russia’s first atomic bomb, on August 29, 1949, near Semipalatinsk.
One day another US intelligence man flew into Urumchi. Frank Bessac (obituary, Jan 5, 2011), a former Office of Strategic Studies officer, was a Fulbright scholar in anthropology studying Mongolian peoples. He was also trying to stay out of the hands of the Chinese communists. Shortly after his arrival the communists overran Urumchi, so the last of the US consular staff plus Zvansov and two fellow Russian refugees, Stephan Yanuishkin and Leonid Shutov, fled by night.
The group now set off for India via Tibet — nine months and 1,200 miles away, by foot, horse and camel, at first through Kazakh territory. Here Zvansov’s fluent Kazakh was indispensable, as was his skill at not wounding Muslim cultural sensitivities. The party headed for Zvansov’s former commander, Osman Bator at Barkol, north of Hami, where they stayed a month before heading south. Buying 21 horses for gold, nine men, including guides, set out along the edge of the Black Gobi, bypassing Dunhuang, to cross the vast Takla Makan desert.
On November 29, 1949, they reached Timerlik Bulak, near Lake Gas Kol, where, having presented the traditional gifts of blue cloth and gold, they received a royal welcome from Hussein Taiji, a leader of pastoral Kazakhs whom Zvansov regarded as little more than a bunch of bandits. They had to overwinter there until late March 1950, when the high passes of the Arka Tagh Mountains leading to the bleak, empty Chang Tang Plateau became passable.
While the anthropologist Bessac was in his element, the others spent most days glumly feeding the fire. Zvansov, an expert hunter, shot gazelle and Przewalski horses, whose meat he dried and salted for the forthcoming journey. Unknown to him the preservative contained Epsom salts, which later had unpleasant consequences. As the plateau had almost no fodder and no blacksmiths to reshoe horses, they bought 15 specially trained meat-eating camels and two liver-eating horses. The party depended on Zvansov’s hunting skills to provide fresh meat for them, chunks of which the animals swallowed without chewing. For the men, rice, sugar, tea and flour were ordered from traders in Khotan, 500 miles due west. Constantly at high altitude they had little appetite for fresh meat — it affected their breathing — and it took far too long to cook. Zvansov noted that, due to water boiling at so low a temperature, “you can happily put your hand in it”.
Setting off again on March 20, their Kazakh guides, fearing Tibetan bandits, soon abandoned them. “As the incessant wind blows all tracks away, we followed landmarks, such as distinct rock formations as well as named grave mounds on high passes — Kalibek, Kasbek and Abul Kasim — each several days apart,” Zvansov recalled. “We never found grass, water or animal dung fuel all at one camp.”
The party of five struggled on in the thin air — for six weeks they never descended below 16,000 feet. On one occasion when hunting with Mackiernan far from camp, Zvansov missed a clear shot. Mackiernan, now starting to show signs of mental instability, rode off in disgust with their horses leaving Zvansov stranded in bitter cold. He wandered lost for hours and was only saved when he heard the distant barking of fierce guard dogs in a nomad’s remote yurt. He was found by his party next morning.
At noon on April 29 the party started to descend towards Central Tibet. Through binoculars Zvansov spotted yak-hair Tibetan tents at a spot known as Shegar-Hunglung. His party, dressed in heavy sheepskin coats, could be mistaken for belligerent Kazakh raiders and, knowing Asian protocol, he explained that one man should go to the Tibetans to prove themselves harmless. (Tibet’s vast northern borderlands were patrolled against Kazakh raiders by sundry militia who had orders to stop strangers or suffer terrible consequences). Mackiernan, who had always taken Zvansov’s advice, abruptly dismissed him and insisted they camp next to the Tibetans’ tents. As they approached they heard warning shots, so Bessac set off with gifts to make contact. Meanwhile, six horsemen, armed with British rifles, approached. More bullets flew, so Zvansov rapidly made a white flag and took a safety catch off a gun. Mackiernan ordered them to drop their rifles and walk out with hands up. Zvansov had other ideas and as the group walked forward, he hung back. Without warning, at point blank range, three shots rang out — the Tibetans perhaps fearing a trap instantly killing his companions. Zvansov fled, doubled up, zigzagging. “I saw dust spout up from bullets hitting the ground, but in rarefied air at 16,000 feet I had no power, I straightened up gasping for breath when a bullet hit below my left knee, ‘boom’!”
Next day the two survivors, Zvansov and Bessac, were led towards Lhasa. Zvansov, in great pain, sat on a stool on a stretcher carried by a rota of a dozen Tibetans who struggled wretchedly to carry his weight at altitude. He made a special saddle with a back support to ride on a camel. While looking for rope in saddlebags he discovered the severed heads of his three companions being taken to Lhasa as proof of the incident.
It had been a terrible mistake. Mackiernan had sent radio messages six months earlier to the US authorities who prevaricated and informed the Tibetan government only on April 5 that the party was due. The delayed message and the miscalculation proved fatal — on May 4 they met runners from Lhasa with a da-yig, a “red arrow” relay letter carried on a spear with jingling bells, with a message for the militia. It was five days too late.
The pair reached Shen Tsa Dzong on May 6, 12 days from Lhasa. There Zvansov was treated by a herbalist who poulticed the bullet’s entry and exit wounds, until, after some days an Indian-trained medical orderly, “Dr” Lahsunyarpil, galloped up from the south. He spoke limited English but brought penicillin for Zvansov which took immediate effect — “an hour later I felt newborn”.
After 24 days spent recuperating, they resumed their journey, gradually descending to below 14,000 feet to cultivated lands, chancing upon a regiment of the Tibetan Army which they reviewed as its band played God Save the King and Marching Through Georgia.
After 65 camps since Gas Kol, they reached Lhasa on June 11, 1950; they were only the 86th and 87th and very last foreigners to do so between the British invasion of 1904 and that of the Chinese communists later that year. In Lhasa they were surprised to meet other Europeans, including Heinrich Harrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet, who greeted them at the city’s outskirts.
They resided at the Tride Linka until July 27. There Zvansov carved three wooden crosses to be put up where their companions had died. On one occasion they had an audience with the 14-year-old Dalai Lama in his summer residence, the Norbu Lingka. He laid his hands on their heads in blessing but due to strict protocol, they were not permitted to speak.
Among the five resident Westerners in Lhasa was another Russian refugee, Dmitri Nedbailoff, who had escaped wartime internment in Dehra Dun in British India. A well-educated man, he was working as an electrical engineer for the Tibetan Government on a British-supplied hydroelectric station.
While Bessac engaged in unofficial discussions (which it is thought might have been Mackiernan’s intention), with the Tibetan Government about the possibility of establishing relations with the US, Zvansov concentrated on reaching India and freedom.
Eventually, as guests of the Tibetan Government, they floated down the rivers Kyi-chu and Tsangpo in a coracle for 80 miles to the ancient monastery of Samye. “The river was swift, full of strong currents, dangerous and sometimes very unpleasant because the bodies of the dead, those which were not fed to vultures in skyburial ceremonies, were often disposed of in the river. The smell was terrible as we frequently passed rotting bodies washed up on the river banks.”
Reaching the Jelep-la pass over the Himalayas into Sikkim, Zvansov could look down towards the plains of India far below and he recalled thinking that he had reached the very edge of the world.
In India he and Bessac were interrogated by British and US intelligence officers. Zvansov spent nearly a year in India until he was granted permission to travel to California where he was met by two CIA men who told him to keep quiet. He settled in Oakland. He was occasionally invited to work with the CIA and return to the Soviet Union but, recalling his father’s advice never to be entangled in such dangerous work, declined.
Bored with his job as a machine minder Zvansov learnt how to repair watches and set up a business. He went on to own four jewellery shops and set up a property business. After his wife died of cancer, he remarried and had a daughter and a son and moved his family to Hawaii. He retired at 65 to pursue his love of fishing.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain Zvansov was finally able to visit his motherland. He visited relatives in Alma-Ata, near his birthplace. His mother had died in 1947 in Kazakhstan; his father in Sinkiang in 1968. In old age his surviving brother and sister moved to be cared for by relatives in Belarus. However, its relationship with the US deteriorated so far that his siblings asked him to cease communication.
In 2006, recalling his epic adventures, Zvansov said, “Looking back it is like a dream — so many years ago — with me in it.”
Vasili Zvansov is survived by his wife and son. A daughter predeceased him.
Vasili Zvansov, adventurer and watch repairer, was born on May 9, 1923. He died on October 1, 2012, aged 89
Surgeon-General at the Ministry of Defence whose research in gastroenterology led to breakthroughs in the treatment of peptic ulcers
Godfrey Milton-Thompson’s naval medical career spanned 45 years and saw him rise to the important posts of Medical Director-General of the Navy and Surgeon-General, Ministry of Defence. He always regretted his lack of sea time, but his service in hospitals, in management appointments and in research was immensely valuable.
His specialist interest was gastroenterology and he was awarded the Royal Navy’s Errol-Eldridge Award in 1974, and in 1976 the Sir Gilbert Blane Gold Medal, founded in 1830 by Sir Gilbert Blane, and conferred annually for contributions to improvements in the health or living conditions of naval personnel. In this case the contribution was an investigation into the incidence of peptic ulcers in naval personnel, some twice the average, possibly a lifestyle effect, painful and occasionally fatal. Milton-Thompson with his team of researchers worked with volunteer naval guinea-pigs to determine the best treatments and dosages to inhibit the production of acid in the gut. Teamed with civilian physicians from the clinic of the gastroenterologist Sir Francis Avery Jones, he was involved in the early use of cimetidine and ranitidine, this last becoming Glaxo’s Zantac in 1981 and by 1988 the world’s biggest-selling prescription drug. Between 1973 and 1981 he and colleagues published many papers on aspects of gut disease in journals including The Lancet, the British Medical Journal and the specialist journal Gut.
Born in 1930, Godfrey Milton-Thompson was the younger son of the vicar of St Mark’s near Birkenhead, brought up in the vicarage and imbued with the strong Christian principles which informed the rest of his life. He graduated from his preparatory school, Woodcote House near Ascot, with a scholarship to Eastbourne College where he excelled at science and captained the rugby team.
He went to the University of Cambridge in 1948 to study medicine at Queens’ College where he admitted to more play than study, but still achieved his degree.
He was offered a place at St Thomas’ Hospital for clinical training where in 1952 he married Noreen, daughter of Colonel Sir Desmond Fitzmaurice, a marriage that was to last 60 years. As a medical student he had been able to defer his National Service; however, once a fully registered practitioner, he decided in 1955 to follow a long family tradition and join the Royal Navy.
After a series of general service and hospital appointments at home and abroad, he became Consultant Physician at the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth, having achieved membership of the Royal College of Physicians. From 1969 to 1971 he was also Honorary Research Fellow at St Mark’s Hospital, London, and Professor of Naval Medicine until 1980. He became the first medical officer to attend the Royal College of Defence Studies, Belgrave Square, in 1981.
His subsequent roles in higher management included Deputy Medical Director-General from 1982 to 1984, a period encompassing the Falklands conflict which imposed on his broad shoulders the hurried provision of sufficient people and supplies to deal with the casualties of war. On promotion to rear-admiral in 1984, he was placed in charge of operational medical services, then appointed deputy surgeon-general in charge of research and training until his two final senior posts from 1985 to 1990. While Surgeon-General to the MoD with responsibility for all three Services, he fought for retention of dedicated military hospitals at home and abroad against the cheeseparing policies of successive governments, eventually without success — Britain’s oldest purpose-built military hospital and then the largest brick building in England at Haslar, Gosport, was the last to close in 2009, the wisdom of these decisions being questioned again today.
Milton-Thompson was appointed KBE in 1988. A particular honour was to have been Honorary Physician to the Queen from 1982 to 1990.
In retirement from the Navy, he maintained his membership of the Medical Research Society and the British Society of Gastroenterology. From 1993 he was Vice-President of the British Digestive Foundation. Among his many charitable activities were Warden of St Katherine’s House, Wantage; chairman of the governors, St Mary’s School, Wantage, and chairman of the Cornwall Community Healthcare Trust.
But his major interest of which he was justifiably proud was his involvement with the Order of St John for 34 years, giving distinguished service across a wide field of activities, tirelessly promoting its interests as Order Hospitaller for the St John Ophthalmic Hospital in Jerusalem and later as chairman of St John Council, Cornwall. He was a valued member of the English Priory Chapter until his death and was invited in 1989 to be a Knight of the order.
A colleague described Milton-Thompson as “aristocratic” and certainly he was well known for his urbane, unflappable and courteous style with, not least, a marked tenacity in argument.
He is survived by his wife Noreen and their three daughters.
Surgeon Vice-Admiral Sir Godfrey Milton-Thompson, KBE, Naval Medical Director-General and Surgeon-General, Ministry of Defence, 1985-90, was born on April 25, 1930. He died on September 23, 2012, aged 82
>Clive Dunn
>Àêò¸ð, èçâåñòíûé ãëàâíûì îáðàçîì ñâîåé ðîëüþ åôðåéòîðà Äæîíñà â ñåðèàëå "Ïàïèíà àðìèÿ", ñ êîðîííûìè ôðàçàìè "Áåç ïàíèêè!" è "Îíè íå ëþáÿò åñëè èì âîòêíóòü". Âîåâàë, áûë â ïëåíó
The Dad’s Army cast filming in 1977: from left, Arnold Ridley, Clive Dunn, Arthur Lowe, Ian Lavender, John Laurie and John Le Mesurier
Dad’s Army actor who made the character of Corporal Jones one of the best loved — and most quoted — in television comedy
Clive Dunn did not exactly spring to attention when he was offered the role of Lance Corporal (“permission to speak”) Jones in Dad’s Army that was to make him a durable television favourite. His reservations were not about his own character, who had fought at the battle of Omdurman under Lord Kitchener, become a butcher in civilian life and joined the Home Guard at the fictional Walmington-on-Sea in the Second World War.
Nor was he worried about playing someone much older than his age. He was in his late forties when Dad’s Army started in 1968, and Jones was in his seventies at least, but by then Dunn had made old men his speciality. He once played Thora Hird’s father, although she was nine years older.
What worried him was that the role of the sergeant would go to an actor who would see him as the stereotyped barking martinet. Instead it went to his close friend, John Le Mesurier, who played the senior NCO with an absent-minded gentleness that still allowed him to prick the pomposity of Arthur Lowe’s Captain Mainwaring.
Only when Dunn was sure that Le Mesurier had signed for the show did he follow suit. He learnt later that Le Mesurier had also hesitated, but only for more money. He also discovered that he was not the first choice for “Jonesy”. The BBC had first approached the comedian Jack Haig who turned the part down for another job.
But as Dunn wrote in his 1986 autobiography, Permission to Speak: “Naturally I was unaware that this offer was to influence my career from that moment on. I didn’t jump at it — I wasn’t particularly hungry.”
Fortunately for television comedy, he did accept and made the excitable Lance Corporal’s cries of “Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ’em!” into memorable catchphrases.
Jones was crucial to the programme’s success and remarkable longevity. His butcher’s van was the platoon’s only source of transport and was employed often as a comic device by the screenwriters David Croft (obituary, September 28, 2011) and Jimmy Perry. He was always the first to volunteer for whatever improbable task needed to be undertaken, frequently citing his experience under Kitchener, fighting the “fuzzy wuzzies” in the Sudan.
Born in Brixton, South London, in 1920, Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn, “Buddy” to his family, came from a background steeped in music hall, summer concert parties and the seaside Fol-de-Rols. His grandfather, Frank Lynne, was a comedian and comic song writer of the 1880s, and his parents, Connie Clive and Bobby Dunn, were well-known performers on the prewar variety circuit. Bobby was a stand-up comic and baritone, Connie a comedienne, character player and singer of burlesque ballads. Dunn grew up amid the itinerant scramble of steam trains, theatrical lodgings and temporary nannies.
A career in showbusiness was almost inescapable. One of his first ventures when still a schoolboy was as an extra in the 1935 Will Hay film Boys Will Be Boys. After a brief spell as a movie clapper boy he attended the Italia Conti stage school in London, where his fellow students and friends included Graham Payn and Richard Todd.
He took a job as assistant to the assistant stage manager at the Richmond Theatre in Surrey at a salary of ten shillings a week. He was rapidly promoted to stage manager. He recalled Lilli Palmer, when appearing in a period play with William Devlin, objecting to the length of time Dunn held the curtain before letting it fall on a passionate centre-stage kiss.
His father was stage manager and tours producer at the Aldwych Theatre for Tom Walls and Ralph Lynn when they were at the peak of their fame in farce. Dunn would stand in the wings watching the pair at work and would later say that Lynn, with his toothy grin, husky voice and impeccable timing, was a strong influence on his own comedy style.
In 1941 Dunn was posted to Egypt in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars training as a medical orderly. From there his regiment took part in the ill-fated Greek campaign during which he was captured. He spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war in Germany and Austria where his comic talents were to emerge, playing to what he acknowledged was a captive audience. His first postwar booking as an entertainer was in a pantomime Goody Two Shoes at the Palace Theatre, Birmingham. The star was the heavyweight comic Fred Emney. Dunn was one of the many postwar comics who played at the Windmill Theatre in between the nude tableaux.
He enrolled in Equity and, although he was christened Robert Benjamin, he registered under the name Clive Dunn — adopting his mother’s stage name — to avoid confusion with his father.
In the early Fifties he was a regular at the Players’ Theatre in London where he met the kitchen washer-up at the time, Les Dawson. Meanwhile Dunn was appearing on such pioneer television shows as New Faces and Funny Thing This Wireless which featured Vera Lynn, Carroll Gibbons, Claude Hulbert and the Windmill Girls.
He also appeared in an early Tony Hancock TV series playing one of his many funny old men. He became a close, golf-playing friend of Hancock after making with him a record of the Radio Ham and Blood Donor sketches.
Hancock met Dunn in the studio lavatory with five minutes to recording time and asked him: “Don’t you ever get nervous, Clive?” Dunn replied: “Always.” Hancock said: “You’ve got it made.” Dunn knew that the comic envied him because he didn’t have to carry the show.
His first important television role was as Old Johnson, the dotty butler, in the long-running army comedy Bootsie and Snudge (1960) starring Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser. Dunn, who was barely 40, played an 83-year-old. Granada ran Bootsie and Snudge 40 weeks non-stop during the peak of its popularity so that the cast became almost part of the family for 18 million viewers.
He worked with Michael Bentine on It’s a Square World and with Spike Milligan on some of his early TV ventures. Later came cameo roles in films, his own TV series My Old Man, with his wife Priscilla as his daughter, and a hit record, Grandad, which went to No 1 and stayed in the charts for 27 weeks.
But the pinnacle of his long career was the bayonet-wielding Jones in Dad’s Army. After the series ended in 1977 he made his opera debut playing Frosch in Die Fledermaus at the London Coliseum.
During the 1980s he retired with his family to the Algarve, where he had bought a villa as a second home many years before.
“I don’t miss Britain much,” he said, “just friends really.” He was regularly called upon to appear in documentaries about Dad’s Army. He enjoyed his hobby of painting but in 2006 it was reported that he had gone blind. He was appointed OBE in 1975.
Dunn met his first wife Patricia Kenyon, a fashion model, at the Players’ but the marriage was dissolved because of what he later said was “lack of children and the seven-year itch”. Shortly afterwards he married Priscilla Morgan, an actress, and they had two daughters.
Clive Dunn, OBE, actor, was born on January 9, 1920. He died on November 7, 2012, aged 92
SAS officer at the time of the dramatic Iranian Embassy siege in London who later became HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland
Clive Fairweather was second-in-command of 22 SAS Regiment during the dramatic operation to lift the Iranian Embassy siege in London in May 1980. Co-ordinating support for the operation from the regiment’s headquarters in Hereford, he made a significant contribution to the eventual rescue of the hostages taken by six gunmen campaigning for autonomy in Iran’s Khuzestan Province.
SAS troopers were seen live on television news bulletins abseiling down the embassy walls, and though the siege was successfully lifted, the publicity led to some concern within the Army about breaches in security, by the revelation of certain Special Force techniques and the possibility that lives had been put at risk by the screening of the assault in real time. Fairweather thought otherwise and argued that the Army should have taken the media into its confidence by revealing the plan in return for a temporary news blackout.
His claim did not win him many friends but it was typical of Fairweather’s maverick approach to soldiering, and his preference not to do things by the book. Earlier in his SAS career, while serving in Northern Ireland, he had caused consternation when he moved into an isolated cottage in South Armagh in order to escape the cramped conditions in the Army’s operating base at Bessbrook Mill. When warned about the security implications he told his superiors that he had installed a flock of geese as a warning system just as the Romans had done to guard the Capitoline Hill.
Later in his career, having left the Army, he was to employ the same sturdy independence while acting as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland.
Clive Bruce Fairweather was born in Edinburgh in 1944, the son of a policeman, and was educated at George Heriot’s School where his scant regard for the rules marked him out as something of a liability. The headmaster asked him to leave in 1962, allegedly “for the sake of the staff and the pupils”. After joining the Territorial Army as a private soldier in the 15th (Scottish) Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, he gained his wings before passing the selection board for the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
He was commissioned into The King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) and served with the 1st Battalion in Borneo and the UK. After six years he applied for service with the SAS and having passed the gruelling selection process he undertook three tours of duty with the Regiment.
Among the highlights was a posting to Jordan where he advised the government on security matters and a training assignment in Dhofar. In Northern Ireland, Fairweather was involved in the investigation of the murder by the Provisional IRA of Captain Robert Nairac, a Grenadier Guards officer undertaking undercover surveillance duties for which he was posthumously awarded the George Cross. After serving as a staff officer in West Germany Fairweather returned to regimental soldiering in 1984 and was appointed commanding officer of the Scottish Division’s Depot at Glencorse Barracks outside Edinburgh where young soldiers bound for Scotland’s infantry regiments were put through their basic training. He quickly won the recruits’ respect by bringing a sense of compassion and fairness to ease them through their often arduous training.
In 1987 he took over command of 1st KOSB, based in West Berlin, and dealt with a bullying scandal involving sadistic initiation rites. Fairweather retired from the Army in 1991 in the post of Divisional Colonel in the Scottish Division based in Edinburgh Castle.
Never one to shirk a challenge, the following year Fairweather accepted an invitation from Ian Lang, Secretary of State for Scotland, to become HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. His damning reports on Scotland’s prisons made uncomfortable reading for politicians and prison governors alike. He opposed the practice of slopping out, was critical of privatisation and disagreed with moves to close Peterhead prison with its specialist unit treating sex offenders. It came as little surprise when he was not reappointed in 2002, a victim, many thought, of his own honesty and integrity. He successfully sued for constructive dismissal.
Latterly, Fairweather acted as Scottish fundraiser for the charity Combat Stress which provides help for servicemen suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A first-class shot and keen glider pilot, he was also a proficient pianist who had once wanted to pursue a career as a professional musician. He was appointed OBE in 1990 and advanced to CBE in 2002 .
His marriage in 1980 to Ann Beatrice Dexter was dissolved in 2003. He is survived by a son and two daughters.
Colonel Clive Fairweather, CBE, SAS soldier, was born on May 21, 1944. He died of cancer on October 13, 2012, aged 68
John Farmer
Àãåíò SOE, îðãàíèçîâûâàâøèé Ñîïðîòèâëåíèå â öåíòðàëüíîé Ôðàíöèè â 1944 ãîäó
Polyglot SOE man who armed and organised a large group of Resistance fighters in central France in 1944
The delivery of John Farmer into German-occupied France in April 1944 was a copybook operation. He landed by parachute in the centre of the lights laid out by the Resistance, while his companion Hélène (Nancy Wake, obituary August 9, 2011) came down 300 yards away, soon to be found, revolver in hand ready to shoot. But next day his Special Operations Executive (SOE) mentor in the north-west Massif Central was arrested by the Gestapo, leaving him in charge of a region he scarcely knew. Fortunately his French was fluent.
His assignment was to establish an SOE circuit — codenamed Freelance — to provide arms by airdrop to a large force of the Maquis resistance in the Auvergne. Another circuit, Benjoin, led by Major Frederick Cardozo (obituary October 13, 2011), was already working with this group yet the extent of the area of potential operations suggested two circuits would cope better than one. At first the local Maquis leader suspected Farmer of being a Gestapo trap of some kind, but after he and Cardozo had presented their plans together he agreed to accept help from them both.
The Maquis was expanding inexorably as, to avoid conscription for forced labour in Germany, young Frenchmen took to the hills, so Farmer began calling for arms and explosives as soon as he had established radio contact with London. By the eve of the Allied invasion of Normandy in early June, he and Cardozo had armed between four and five thousand resistance fighters.
Arming was relatively easy, but training was a daunting problem. On June 4 a radio message from London instructed Farmer to collect a new SOE agent from a safe house in Montluçon. The new man was Lieutenant Dussac of the US Army tasked to be the liaison officer between the Resistance and any US troops dropped in the region after D-Day. None were, but Dussac proved a proficient small-arms instructor and he trained the Maquis leaders so they — in turn — could train their fighters.
Just when Farmer was about to congratulate himself on achieving a great deal in a short time, the enemy took a hand in his affairs. On June 20, two weeks after the Allied invasion in the north, several German infantry battalions supported by aircraft, tanks and artillery began a co-ordinated sweep of his area. From 0700 hours until after nightfall the Maquisard camps and training grounds were straffed and shelled. The attack was not on the scale of that against the Maquis on the Vecors plateau on July 18, but it was launched with similar ferocity.
Aware that guerrillas should never try to stand against regular troops en masse, Farmer ordered rapid dispersal of the Maquis to the hills. He became separated from his radio operator and Hélène but she, a woman of phenomenal spirit, took command of the Maquis around her and killed a number of the enemy before leading them to safety.
Despite this setback Farmer regrouped his force, cycling hundreds of kilometres to find a new radio operator and request weapons to replace those abandoned in the dispersal. Once re-armed, he led the Maquis against the German garrison at Montluçon, containing it until Allied troops arrived. The Military Cross he received for his gallantry and resourcefulness in arming and organising such a large group of the Maquis was arguably the least he deserved. He also received the French Croix de Guerre and, in 1996, the Légion d’Honneur.
John Hine Farmer was the son of the Rev William H. Farmer who died in the Spanish influenza pandemic at the end of the First World War, leaving his mother, a professional violinist, in straitened circumstances. Finding life on the Continent less expensive than in England she lived for periods in Belgium and Switzerland, the young Farmer attending school in Munich, Fribourg and Godinne, Belgium, before going to Beaumont College, Windsor.
From 1936 to 1939 he worked in the Banque d’Angleterre in France. He enlisted in the Royal Artillery at the outbreak of war and served with the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940. He volunteered for SOE in 1944 and was parachuted into France three months later. After demobilisation he joined the Diplomatic Service and was posted to Vienna, Rome and Paris.
He was president of the Swiss branch of the Royal British Legion from 1996 to 2009.
His wartime marriage to Alison Impey was dissolved, and he later married Frances Fisher, who predeceased him. His partner since 1992, Margaret Steele, died in 2012. He is survived by a son of his first marriage and three daughters of his second.
John H. Farmer, MC, veteran of the SOE, was born on January 12, 1917. He died on October 29, 2012, aged 95
Physician in the destroyer Hurricane which rescued survivors of ships sunk by the U-boats in the Atlantic
Peter Collinson, a graduate of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, was appointed in May 1940 as Medical Officer of the destroyer Hurricane which had just completed construction at Barrow-in-Furness. After swift sea trials she commissioned for service in the Home Fleet on June 21 and was immediately involved in rescue operations in the Western Approaches — this was the worst month of the Battle of the Atlantic to date, with 58 ships sunk by U-boats and 22 by aircraft.
Between June 25 and 29 Hurricane rescued survivors from the Empire Toucan, Lenda, Leticia and Saranac to a total of about 110, many in acute distress. The first three of these ships were victims of the U-boat ace Günther Prien, famous for sinking the battleship Royal Oak in the supposedly safe anchorage at Scapa Flow.
Just after midnight on September 18, Collinson, in his secondary duty as cipher officer, decoded an Admiralty message ordering Hurricane to proceed “with utmost despatch” to rescue survivors from a ship 300 miles away. A later signal broke the tragic news that this was the City of Benares carrying among others 90 evacuee children to Canada as part of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (Corb) programme to send young children to the Dominions away from the dangers of bombing at home. Hurricane arrived at the scene in the early afternoon, some 24 hours after the sinking, and was able to rescue 115 survivors including 15 children from 12 lifeboats. Of the 407 on board, 260 were lost. City of Benares had been the lead ship of Convoy OB213 and among the dead were the convoy commodore, his three staff officers and the ship’s master. Of the 90 children only 17 eventually survived, three small boys dying on board Hurricane. City of Benares had been torpedoed by U48, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Heinrich Bleichrodt, a highly decorated ace who survived the war. It had also sunk the steamer Marina in the same action and a muddle about whose lifeboat was whose resulted in Hurricane rescuing 20 from Marina but, as darkness fell, missing one of City of Benares’s lifeboats with about 40 on board including six Corb boys. They were rescued by the destroyer Anthony after eight terrifying days.
Assisted by some of the passengers, Collinson and his two naval sick berth attendants worked at this immensely distressing task without sleep for three days. Two older girls, Beth Walder and Bess Cummings, were seriously hypothermic, having clung on to the upturned keel of a lifeboat for 17 hours. They survived and both kept in contact with Collinson for many years.
Some of Bleichrodt’s crewmen reportedly wept when they heard the news, but the German high command argued that it was culpable to send children to sea in a war zone and that the City of Benares would indubitably have returned with war materials.
Besides convoy escort duty Hurricane’s remarkable rescues continued with 99 survivors of the whale factory ship Terje Viken (again sunk by Prien) in March 1941; three from the motor ship HenryMory and the master, 170 crew, eight gunners and 273 passengers from the City of Nagpur in April. The overcrowding and problems of medical care must have been acute.
When Hurricane was damaged by bombing alongside in Liverpool in May, Collinson was sent to the naval training establishment HMS Royal Arthur at Skegness until appointment in early 1943 as medical officer to the 3,500-ton assault troopship Royal Ulsterman which took part in landings on Sicily and at Salerno and Anzio. Royal Ulsterman returned to the Home Fleet in early 1944 to take part in the D-Day landings in Normandy in June.
His next posting was as Chief Medical Officer of a RN team at the Kilcreggan Hospital on the Clyde. Here he met his wife, Desne Service, a Wren, and married her in April 1946 after his demobilisation.
He became the third generation of Collinsons to work in his father’s practice at Wentworth, near Rotherham, continuing for 42 years until retirement aged 75 in 1988. His second son, Charles, also joined the practice, as the fourth generation.
Among other activities, Collinson was a police surgeon for the West Riding of Yorkshire, medical officer of the Lady Mabel College and a steward of the West Riding Medical Charitable Society. He is survived by his wife and their two sons and daughter.
Surgeon Lieutenant Peter Collinson, RNVR, physician, was born on October 26, 1913. He died on September 23, 2012, aged 98