Colonel Derek Wilford

Derek Wilford was born on the 16th of February 1933 in Leicestershire. He was born out of wedlock, his mother having been in service and he never knew his father. He was raised by his mother’s parents and for many years believed that his Grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his sister. His school fees and generous Christmas presents were paid by an anonymous benefactor.

Attending school in Loughborough, where many of the teachers were away at the war, he excelled at Latin and Greek, acted in Greek plays and Shakespeare, claimed the School Prize and in his final year was declared Victor Ludorum. He applied and was accepted for a place at RADA but eventually declined the offer.

Called up for National Service in 1952 he went to Eaton Hall in Cheshire for officer training and was commissioned into the Leicestershire Regiment.

The following year he was posted to Malaya where the Malayan Emergency [1948 – 60] was under way and was seconded to the 5th Battalion of The Malay Regiment. He quickly became a fluent Malay speaker and formed a high opinion of the Malay soldiers who were brave and very quiet when moving in the jungle. He took part in numerous jungle patrols which typically lasted between 7 and 14 days and with his Malays he was involved in several successful actions against the Communist Terrorists [CTs] resulting in the deaths and capture of a number of them. He then volunteered to do a second two-year tour with the 7th Gurkhas.

The CTs could be vicious opponents and often carried out unspeakable atrocities against local people. Wilford well knew this but perhaps an early illustration of his humanity was that he always regretted that anybody had to be killed. It was during that time that he rescued an orphaned Gibbon whom he called Wendy. They became inseparable, with Wendy often accompanying Wilford on jungle patrols and acting as an extra sentry at night.

Upon return from Malaya he attempted to keep Wendy but quarantine laws obliged him to place her in a zoo near Lincoln.

Wilford then served in Cyprus during the EOKA troubles and on operations in the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1960 he was briefly in the newly formed East Anglian Regiment before transferring to 22 Special Air Service Regiment [SAS] where he stayed for three years doing spells on operations, as Adjutant and as a liaison officer with the United States 7th Special Forces in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Here he worked with Captain Charles [Charlie] Beckwith, later the founder and first commander of the US DELTA – equivalent to the SAS and Wilford focused upon imparting his experiences in Malaya and on the selection and training of special forces troops

It was not until 1977 that the US activated DELTA Force and its first commander was Charlie Beckwith. Wilford and Beckwith remained close until Beckwith’s death.

While serving with the SAS in Malaya, he led a high-risk Search and Rescue operation to recover a Captain John Tadman whose Auster aircraft had crashed into the jungle, in an area known to be dominated by insurgents. Tadman was severely injured. After 2 days in the deep jungle, they reached the scene of the crash just as the insurgents were closing in. It took a further 4 days to recover Tadman to a safe extraction point.

After attending Staff College where he was one of the top three students, all of whom had served in the SAS, he was appointed Brigade Major of 2 Infantry Brigade. He was subsequently approached by The Parachute Regiment and offered command of ‘D’ Company of the 2nd Battalion [2 PARA]. March 1969 found him on the Caribbean island of Anguilla on Operation Sheepskin, a short-lived and non-violent operation which restored British rule on the island. One officer remembers him sitting outside his tent reading Latin poetry in the original text. Later he took D Company to Northern Ireland on 2 PARA’s first Operation Banner tour before being promoted in 1971 to Lt Colonel and command of 1 PARA in Palace Barracks.

Four months after the events in Londonderry Wilford took his men back to Aldershot for several weeks of intensive re-training before they were unexpectedly summonsed back to Belfast in July for a further four months on Operation Motorman, the operation designed to re-establish control over the No-Go areas in the Province. The CLF specifically asked for 1 PARA in case Motorman went badly wrong and resulted in serious public disorder and violence from the PIRA and he needed Wilford and his paratroopers on hand.

In 1973, he took 1 PARA to Cyprus for a six-month United Nations tour before handing over command in November of that year.

Thereafter Wilford served in Nigeria, Australia, South West District and at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe [SHAPE] in Belgium, where in his spare time he taught painting, but the generals in the Army had by then decided that Wilford was too hot to handle and only one more promotion followed. He retired from the Army in Belgium in 1983 and lived there for the rest of his life.

Derek Wilford was a man of many parts; a scholar, classicist, thespian, a natural soldier and perhaps above all a natural leader with a total grasp of his trade. He exuded confidence. He was a man of action who was equally at home with a palette and canvas or a copy of Virgil or Ovid in the Latin text. He was a soldier who like many great soldiers actually hated war and killing. His men not only admired and respected him, they, it could almost be said, loved him and their loyalty to him was absolute as was his to them. In later years he suffered from Parkinson’s disease which he bore with frustration but without complaint.

He married first Janet Frith and later Linda Nash. He is survived by both and two sons, one of whom also became a Lieutenant Colonel in The Parachute Regiment, from his first marriage and a daughter from his second.

Derek Wilford died on 24 November 2023.