Major Colin Gillrspie MBE

Major Colin Gillespie, who has died aged 98, was a sapper officer who saw active service in the Second World War and with the SAS in Malaya; after retiring from the Army, he became one of the West Country’s leading wine growers.

In 1957, Gillespie was posted to HQ Far East Land Forces in Singapore. Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major General) Tony Deane-Drummond, the commander of 22 Special Air Service Regiment, visited the HQ from his base near Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, and was impressed by Gillespie’s training in parachuting and his experiences in the Indian jungle. He asked him to join one of the squadrons for operations against the communist terrorists.
Gillespie was flown to a police post in a remote area and then made a four-hour trek across rough country to the SAS camp. Armed with a 12-bore shot gun, he took part in many patrols, led by Iban trackers. Every 10 days, the team cut a hole in the jungle canopy, marked it with a balloon and radioed for supplies to be parachuted from an RAF Dakota. He subsequently commanded a 10-man troop in the north, close to the Thai border. At short notice, however, he and his small force were pulled out of the jungle; two squadrons had been flown in great secrecy to Oman and the decision had been made to close down the SAS operation in Malaya.

Colin Leonard Beauchamp Gillespie, the son of an officer in the Royal Marines who served in the battleship Royal Oak at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was born at Chatham, Kent, on May 10 1925. He was educated at Wellington and joined the Royal Engineers. After being commissioned, he was posted to 625 Field Squadron RE, 6th Armoured Division, in Italy in the last stages of the war in north- west Europe. He was billeted for a few days in an old monastery near the River Volturno. The bedrooms were lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. An American officer, back from leave, went to bed after an evening drinking and shot the light out with his revolver before turning in.

After the war, Gillespie served in Palestine and Hong Kong, and in 1953 he became one of the RE instructors at Sandhurst. He returned from Malaya in 1959 and commanded B Squadron at the SAS camp near Malvern, Worcestershire, before taking a staff appointment at HQ East Africa Command, Nairobi, Kenya. One of his tasks in 1961 was to lead a party to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and then set off fireworks to celebrate neighbouring Tanzania’s Independence Day.

He returned to a wooden, hutted camp at Crookham, Hampshire, to command 9 Independent Parachute Squadron before taking it to Cyprus as part of the UN peacekeeping force. He was appointed MBE at the end of an exacting tour.

His final appointments took him to Tidworth, Wiltshire, as second-in command of the RE regiment. This was followed by a posting to the Joint Warfare Establishment near Salisbury, where the staff of the three services had the task of presenting scenarios of likely war zones in the future.
Gillespie retired from the Army in 1971. He considered using his skills with explosives to blow up old pill boxes and redundant factory chimneys, but decided against it. Other possibilities were breeding rabbits, fattening calves, raising day-old chicks or looking after dogs for servicemen posted overseas who had to leave their pets behind. He tried fish farming for a time. It was going well until a huge storm flooded the valley. The nets were swept away and the fish with them. He decided to become a wine grower, and established himself on a farm at the village of North
Wootton, near Wells, Somerset. Gradually expanding his acreage, he cultivated French and German vines and also produced wines under contract for other growers in the South-West. He twice won the Gore-Browne Trophy for the best wine of the year and from 1980 to 1985 served as chairman of the English Vineyards’ Association. In 1999, he sold his farm and business and retired to Wells.

Colin Gillespie married, in 1952, Sue Cursham. She predeceased him and he is survived by a daughter, Janet, and a son, Simon, who is a well-known London fine art conservator and restorer.