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Digby Willoughby 1954.
The son of an Indian Army officer, Digby Jeremie Willoughby was born in India on 4th May 1934. Educated at Blundell’s School, he was commissioned from Sandhurst in August 1954 and joined the 1st Battalion, 2nd Gurkha Rifles, on operations in Malaya. In 1962, during the Brunei Revolt, his battalion was deployed and Willoughby, together with a small group of soldiers, rescued the sultan from his palace, which was threatened by insurgents. Earning the gratitude of the sultan, he was also MiD.
In 1964, Willoughby was commanding A Company during the Indonesian Confrontation and became involved in one of the few large-scale actions of the campaign on 6th September. Successfully clearing four enemy positions in a rolling assault and then beating off the subsequent counter-attack, he was awarded an immediate MC. After a tour commanding Ypres Company at Sandhurst, during which time the present Sultan of Brunei was one of his cadets, Willoughby took command of his battalion in 1972. Retiring from the army in 1978, he became the chief executive of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club.
During leave from his regiment in Europe in the late 1950s, Willoughby started riding the Cresta Run at St Moritz, breaking the record for a two-man toboggan in 1961 and representing Great Britain in the world games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1962. A fearless competitor, he suffered over 50 falls at the notorious shuttlecock bend, on one occasion breaking his neck. As an administrator, he would instruct those who fell at the bend to get to their feet: ‘Only then do I know that neither of your legs is broken. Then I want both of your arms in the air and across your chest so that I can see that you are capable of taking your toboggan out of the way...because you are wasting our time down there!’
Always immaculately turned out, and with an aura of a bygone age, Willoughby was a skilled administrator who oversaw the growth of the club, while still preserving its
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