Lieutenant-Colonel David S M Gore

David came from an Army family in the days when Britain had an Empire and travelled by ship. His father and four of David’s uncles fought in the Great War (WW1). The eldest uncle, Sydney, one of “the Old Contemptibles”, a lieutenant in the Royal West Kents and also an international footballer, was killed at Neuve Chapelle in France in 1914. David’s father, serving in the Australian infantry, landed at Gallipoli in 1915 where he was wounded during that disastrous eight-month campaign. After the war he transferred to the Indian Army. In WW2 he commanded a battalion of the 8th Punjab Regiment in Burma during the Arakan campaign of early 1942.

 David was born in the North-West Frontier Province of India (now Pakistan) on the edge of Kashmir where his father was on active service. Thereafter his early years were spent in the Shan States of Burma near the border with China. His education began in 1939 at a boys’ boarding Prep School just north of London (coinciding in 1940-41 with ‘the Blitz’ when, over a period of eight months, the boys spent nights sheltering in the cellars). Then at Wellington College an early morning bomb killed the Head, the only school casualty. In 1948 David joined the Worcestershire Regiment as a ‘regular’ recruit (a popular battalion - then based in the West Indies).

At Sandhurst (Intake 5; 18 months) he was a member of the 1949 Hockey XI, who toured West Germany including playing at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. 12 years later ‘the Russian wall’ was built there. The team saw the huge progress that had been achieved by the British Army in barely four post-war years, helping to restore life in West Germany, with the Marshall Plan funding just starting. It was a sad contrast to the still desolate Russian Zone of Berlin. British trains to Berlin in daylight all had to have blinds closed so Brits couldn’t see Russia’s East Germany!

Next year, 1950, David was commissioned into the Royal Artillery, and returned to BAOR (British Army on the Rhine) to fight ‘the Cold War’. Initially he joined 1 Corps’ 94 Locating Regiment RA at Lüneburg near the East German, Russian held, frontier. It was near Lüneburg that the war in Europe had ended and the final document of German surrender signed in May 1945. Only four months later, the first War Crimes trials took place in the town. In the dock were the Nazi gaolers of Belsen Concentration Camp, liberated by the British Army that April. By the end of the year the Commandant of Belsen, Joseph Kramer, together with his cohorts were hanged there for “crimes against humanity”. Later David was to spend two tours of duty, six years in all, with those awful Belsen memorials just down the road.

The first tour was in 1954 when David was transferred as a Captain, Troop Commander, to nearby 4th Regiment RHA in 7th Armoured Division (famous in WW2 as “the Desert Rats”). The threat at the time was of a large Russian armoured attack from across the Elbe River. In preparation for this, his task as a Forward Observation Officer in a Cromwell tank was to provide artillery fire support for the 4th Hussars (the cavalry regiment in which Winston Churchill served as a subaltern in India before WW1). Both Regiments were then based at Hohne, which lies alongside the largest training area in Western Europe. On its other side were the Belsen stone memorials with, at that time, its large mounds of earth, each marked with the number of dead beneath, the largest 5000 (all now flattened by inscribed concrete).

1955 saw a couple of hiccups; first was the arrival of a bill from the great City of Hamburg for David’s Regiment to pay several million Deutsche Marks for causing an early morning power failure over the whole of north Hamburg. This had followed the regiment’s part in a great Rhine Army parade through the streets of the City in salute to their C-in-C, that great Airborne soldier, General “Windy” Gale. Before dawn the following day, David had the task of leading the regiment’s ‘A’ (Armoured/Tracked) vehicles, used on the parade, on route to board railway ‘flats’ waiting for the journey back to Hohne. In the dark, David’s Cromwell flattened one of two concrete stanchions holding up some cables. The cables fell to the ground, consumed in sparks, as the tracks of the whole column of about 14 tanks and guns ran over them. Ahead in the dawn light he came upon German workers shouting in frustration as they tried to get their electric trams to move. In the end, the German Police responsible for the route that David had to follow, rightly got the blame, and presumably the bill.

The second misfortune was not as easily discarded. “4 RHA Officers Mess blown up during Guest Night” was the Hohne Garrison gossip. Details were vague; it seems that the mess anteroom had been taken over by a party of senior officers playing Bridge, while a younger element amused themselves using gun cotton to uproot tree stumps at the edge of the Mess garden. Come midnight, David, who was Mess Secretary, came out and decided to signal ‘close of play’, especially to the demon Bridge players indoors. After tamping explosive into a flower bed by the Bar window at the front of the large Mess building, he walked into the Bar to observe the effect. A loud noise and some flying glass brought Rubbers to an abrupt end. All David had to do was help the dazed card players, now with plenty to talk about, get off to bed. At first light German Garrison staff started replacing window panes (144 were needed) and removing the earth that defaced the front of the Mess. It was able to reopen in time for the arrival of lunch guests.

Sport featured large in David’s six years in Europe. He consistently represented the Army at hockey, with which team he travelled widely throughout West Germany. For his Regiment he also performed in athletics (800 metres), cross-country running and skiing. In the year that the British Olympic ski team was being selected from the Army in Germany, he reached the final stages of selection for the long-distance (Langlauf) Skiing events. He also took advantage of the Kiel Yacht Club (run by UK since WW2) providing Baltic sailing for free, on one occasion being stuck for a week storm-bound in Copenhagen.

In 1957 David returned home to Aldershot as an instructor at Mons Officer Cadet School providing Special-to-Arm training for all National (18 month) Servicemen selected for a commission in the Artillery. Their final week’s live firing always took place on Sennybridge Range in the Brecon Beacons of Wales. Aldershot was then also the home of 16 Parachute Brigade and in 1959 he was transferred up the road to 33rd Airborne Regiment, the artillery fire power for the three Parachute Regiments of the Brigade. Initially as a Troop Commander and then as Adjutant, he took part in Brigade deployments in Norway and other parts of Europe to test our NATO allies and, latterly, the Brigade itself in the Libyan desert. For one memorable Brigade parachute exercise, with the DZ near the Danish border, they decided to mount it from the German island of Sylt. Then much of the island was a nudist colony; the sight of the Brigade HQ staff off duty all without clothes was startling to say the least.

David had qualified on a ‘P’ Company course to join the Parachute Brigade back in 1953, before the introduction of “reserve parachutes”. He was to see the lives of two Gunners saved by their reserves while he was giving the commentary for a 33rd Airborne demonstration air drop in West Germany to impress potential airborne recruits. In a flight of some four RAF Beverley aircraft in pairs, the wing of a following plane sliced off two parachute canopies in the stick jumping from the aircraft ahead – result two reserves pulled, one soldier unscathed, the other only a broken leg.

 On 27 June 1961, 33rd Airborne was transformed with a new name and cap badge into 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery (the horse was presumably “Pegasus”). The CO, Lt-Col Toby StGeorge Caulfeild RHA, described the whole process in Latin: “Primo avulso non deficit alter aureus”, presumably to save further explanation (translation below). Within a couple of months, events in the Middle East suddenly imposed again. Iraq threatened to invade the newly independent Kuwait and its potential oil reserves. The naval force that was already mounted to defend Kuwait (Op. Vantage) was to be reinforced, among others, by 2 PARA and their gunner support. Appropriately that was “Sphinx” Battery of 7 Para RHA under Major Bob Lyon. At 1800 hours he received the order to move from David as adjutant, and they were on the aircraft at 1030 hrs next day with their new Pack Howitzers and all their stores. So rapidly was the whole reinforcement deployed into the desert that Iraq made no move. Subsequently “Sphinx” was replaced by “Bull’s” Battery (Major Gerry Brown) until the Arab League took over Kuwait’s defence. It was not until nearly 30 years later that Iraq finally invaded Kuwait, producing the Gulf War and its huge Iraqi death-toll.                                                                                  

Translation of the Latin tag above (from Virgil’s Aeneid) relating to 7th Para Regt RHA: “The first being plucked away, another of gold succeeds”.

 On 1 January 1962 after their return from Oman, a Field Artillery Regiment based at the Royal Citadel on Plymouth Hoe, radically changed its role under a new CO, Lt-Col Denis O’Flaherty DSO. Denis had been an Army Commando during WW2 and had lost his right eye, and much else on the 1941 Vaagso Raid in Norway. His new command, 29 Commando Regiment, then became an integral part of Commando Forces Royal Marines, thus ‘on loan’ to the Navy [but, to this day, still on lower Army pay]. It was on the same day that David also joined 29 Regiment - from 7 Para RHA at Aldershot. The task of the new Regiment was to provide fire support for the Marines, including 3 Cdo Brigade RM then based in Malaya/Singapore. Army Engineer, Logistic and Naval Gunfire units were added later.

David has taken pride in being at the start and, for six years, in the development and training of this new combined Royal Marine and Army formation. It became the task force which fought so successfully in the assault landing and subsequent operations in the Falklands of 1982. Then it was led by two old Royal Marine colleagues of his, Julian Thompson, Falklands Brigade commander, and his boss Jeremy Moore (mentioned twice here). Jeremy was overall “Commander Land Forces” and took the Argentine surrender. Julian, who earlier had been Brigade Major when David was a CO, is a military historian and now chairman of “Veterans for Britain”, a defence pressure group of which David is a member.

Back to 1962, David became Battery Captain of Maiwand Battery under Major Allan Harvey. Commando conversion training took place at Lympstone and Maiwand was then selected to join 3 Cdo Brigade in Malaya as a detached unit, with the rest of the Regiment to follow later. In the event 29 Regiment did not reach Malaya for nearly three years, and found there a “very independent” Battery having had three operational tours with the Marines in various parts of Borneo.

The Gunners of “Maiwand” Battery (its honour title, awarded after ‘a gallant defeat’ in the Afghanistan of 1880) had a warm but brief welcome from 3 Commando Brigade, who were spread between Johore and Singapore. The Battery’s first Christmas was spent on operations with 42 Commando (including Captain Jeremy Moore MC), dealing with the Brunei Revolt in which the Battery’s 105 mm Pack Howitzers were in action for the first time (in 1960 David, when in 33rd Airborne, spent a month with the Italian Alpini preparing for 16 Para Brigade’s acceptance of these guns). Then in Brunei, after widespread flooding, operations had to give way to rescue work. It was then that David, returning after dark from a patrol, rejoined Maiwand Battery HQ beside the Temburong River, high up in an empty village on stilts. An overnight flash-flood, estimated to have raised the river level by 22 feet, reached hut floor level; a Wessex helicopter of 845 Cdo Squadron rescued them soon after first light. A few days later that whole village was swept away.

After Brunei the Battery returned to their base at Burma Camp in Johore (alongside the Jungle Warfare School), where they rashly practised rafting their Howitzers – without loss. David did a course on “Resistance to Interrogation”, a fascinating insight into the pressure suffered by two of his friends captured by the Chinese during the UN Korean War 1950-53. His course ended with a three-day jungle trek being hunted by dogs. Men who reached the end in time, suitably exhausted, were immediately led away with sacks over their heads and Gurkha guards, to a jungle prison camp to undergo 24 hours ‘realistic’ interrogation by an Intelligence team specially out from UK.

Within a few months the Battery was again on operations, this time for seven months of purely infantry work in the highland jungles of Sarawak. It was the start of what came to be called ‘Indonesian Confrontation’ – dissuading the Indonesian Army from infiltrating into and thereby threatening the newly established (Sept 1963) country of “Malaysia”. It can roughly be described as an archipelago of territories ringing the southern end of the South China Sea. To this day it remains of strategic significance with China’s apparently warlike intention of controlling all movement on those waters preparatory to her long-threatened invasion of Taiwan.

As an operational preliminary, David accompanied Tom Harrisson (Curator of the Sarawak Museum, and well known on TV as “the Barefoot Anthropologist”) visiting five of the jungle Longhouses in the Bario region of Sarawak by air. In each, Tom was greeted by such huge crowds that the helicopter was in some danger from their enthusiasm. In WW2 Major Harrisson DSO OBE had successfully raised the Kelabit tribes against the Japanese enemy, and he was again aiming to obtain tribal help against Indonesian invasion.

Initially the Battery, overseen by the Army’s 99 Gurkha Brigade HQ, were deployed near the central highland border with Indonesia. It was an amazing experience living close to these friendly Dayaks, some of whom were providing intelligence from both sides of the Indonesian border – paid for from the Battery’s small Commando Budget. The Battery gave a jungle party for the local children - about 50 arrived from far and wide. And from road-head marched key members of the Royal Marine Band carrying their instruments across a tree-trunk the Gunners had felled over a ravine, while David arrived by air with the ice cream. Later, after the departure of Allan Harvey for BAOR, when David had completed over six months family separation in the jungle, he sent an application to his CO (Denis O’Flaherty in Plymouth) for married quarters in Sarawak for “Maria Anak Yang”. In reply Denis sent an AF B2079 (Adverse Report) followed later by a new Battery Commander, Major John, the Lord Walsingham MC.

 Returning to their guns at Burma Camp in Johore, the Battery underwent annual firing camp, and it was not long before they were back on operations. This time it was at the west end near Kuching, where the Indonesian border nears Sarawak’s north-west coast. With ‘the potential enemy’ so close, unit security was vital and the Battery was tasked to test the RAF defence of Kuching Airport. On the morning of the attack-alarm test, the RAF guards all appeared rapidly with their weapons, and then lined up outside in an orderly queue to draw their ammunition – for slaughter!

 The return to Burma Camp found the rest of 29 Commando Regiment arriving from Plymouth. Early in 1964 David, now a Major, was sent to Salisbury Plain for a year’s Gunnery Staff Course at the School of Artillery, and then went as instructor to the School of Army Aviation at Middle Wallop. In this period in UK he was still playing for the Royal Artillery hockey club most winter weekends, as secretary and later captain, competing generally with the big London Hockey Clubs. Back at regimental duty again in 1967, he joined 26th Field Regiment (Lt-Col John Painter) in the new 7th Armoured Brigade, again at Hohne Camp. This time he had a Centurion tank and commanded another Battery with a long history. The Battery in 1815 under Captain Charles Sandham had fired the first rounds which opened the battle of Waterloo. So, with some time to spare, David took the whole Battery for a night out in Brussels some 400 miles away, followed next morning by a walk round the famous battlefield with a military historian.

Returning to the School of Artillery in 1969 he was for three years Senior Instructor of the Young Officers Branch, training new entrants from Sandhurst. He still recalls inviting the Royal Marine young officers, under Major Jeremy Moore MC (of 42 Commando in Brunei 1962-3), to a boisterous dinner where, among other entertainment, the RA Band were induced to play while marching on top of the long dining tables. A year later David found himself serving alongside some of those young Royal Marine officers.

 In 1972 he was promoted Lt-Col and made Commanding Officer of 29 Commando Regiment based back at the Royal Citadel in Plymouth. In addition, he also had two outlier Batteries at Arbroath in Scotland and in Malta. The regiment’s role was to help protect “NATO’s European flanks”, which meant specialist training to fight in Norway's Arctic winter in the north, and practising amphibious assault landings with our NATO allies in the warmth of the Mediterranean south. This eventually conflicted with events in Northern Ireland prompted by “Bloody Sunday”, after which all commando units in turn became engaged there (the regiment lost one killed, one wounded). Then in July 1974 there was inter-communal violence in Cyprus; wearing UN insignia, David with the Battery from Malta watched Turkey’s first invasion of the north coast of this beautiful island which has for so long been our secure Middle Eastern base.

 David had skied in the Alps over many winters, and in 1972 was given leave to take part in the two month “British Alpine Ski Traverse” (from Kaprun, Austria to Gap in France, c.500 miles) led by Alan Blackshaw, senior Civil Servant and Royal Marine. In Switzerland during a climb to the peak of the Breithorn (4165 metres), while roped up on the narrow summit ridge, a stumbler on David’s rope pulled him and others off the edge. By good fortune the end of his rope was held by none other than Mike Horatio Westmacott with his ice axe (the youngest member of Colonel John Hunt’s team who, in 1953, were the first to climb Everest). David and the others found themselves unharmed but hanging down against an ice wall for twenty minutes. Such European mountain experience probably fitted David well for his last appointment; he was sent to the Bavarian Alps as British Liaison Officer and instructor at the NATO School (SHAPE) at Oberammergau. The School, run by the Americans, contained a large staff with seven different nationalities. It was where the alliance's military strategy, then including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, was disseminated, and where American Staff Officers learnt about Europe. SHAPE = Supreme HQ Allied Powers in Europe.

David resigned from the Army in 1978 and settled in Berkshire with his wife, Ann Pellew-Harvey and their six children. He spent most of seven years with Bonaventure International, besides other duties, providing on the spot help to companies trying to sell into the tricky Libyan market. The strength of Bonaventure’s influence with the Gaddafi regime fluctuated wildly. Then for another seven years David gave emergency planning advice to Oxfordshire County Council (especially during the great tree blow-down of 1987). In 2007 David sponsored a biography of his Scottish great grandfather, Robert Caldwell, Bishop of South India, written by his old friend Dr Vincent Kumaradoss of Chennai Christian College. David has written three historical books; his last, “Soldiers, Saints & Scallywags” 2009, was dedicated to his 15 grandchildren.

 

 

 

                                                                    History of Service

Recruit enlistment, School of Infantry – Worcestershire Regiment (Private) 24 Aug 1948 – 1 Jan 1949

RMA Sandhurst - Royal Artillery (Officer Cadet) 1 Jan 1949 – 21 July 1950           

1st Corps, BAOR - Radar & Survey (2nd Lieutenant) 1951-54

P Company & Para Course, Aldershot (Lieutenant) 1953

4 Regiment RHA (Captain) 1954-57

33 Para Light Regiment RA (Captain) 1959-61

7 Para Regiment RHA (Captain/Adjutant) 1961-62

3 Cdo Brigade, Royal Marines (Captain) 1 Jan 1962 – 1964

School of Army Aviation (Major) 1965-67                             

26 Field Regiment RA (Major) 1967-69                        

29 Cdo Regiment RA (Lieutenant-Colonel) 1972-75                       

UNFICYP Turkish Invasion. (Lieutenant-Colonel) 1974

NATO School (SHAPE). (Lieutenant-Colonel) 1975-78