Page 147 - Chronicle Vol 17

Although many people found that reading “Low Intensity Operations” was hard going, Frank’s other books were both readable and instructive as he recalled his many and varied experiences and the lessons he learned.
In his next book entitled “Bunch of Five” he described how he dealt with counter- insurgency and peacekeeping operations based on his involvement in four cam- paigns in Kenya, Malaya, Oman and Cyprus. The fifth and final digit was to have dealt with operations in Northern Ireland, but that potato was deemed to be too hot to handle so instead he set out his conclusions on the way in which operations should be conducted in these different areas.
Frank’s least favourite jobs were in the War Office, later the MoD, and he was glad to have spent only two short spells there. He was an instructor at the Royal Naval College Greenwich and also attended the American Armed Forces Staff College where, although a student, he was much in demand to address various audiences of senior American officers anxious to hear his lessons learned during his already action-packed career.
Successful command of a Green Jackets battalion in the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus was followed by his year at Oxford and he was promoted to brigadier in 1970 to command 39 Brigade.
This was a difficult two-year period, not only for Northern Ireland, but also for Frank and Elizabeth and they were to be affected by those events for the rest of their lives.
Frank was inaccurately blamed for proposing and planning internment without trial of many Catholics in 1972. But such a highly sensitive operation was nec- essarily thought up and sanctioned at a much more senior level than that of a brigadier.
More serious than the often scurrilous and inaccurate accusations and bad press coverage were the legal and actual physical threats to Frank personally.
When, after Belfast, he moved to Warminster to command the School of Infantry, the family were more than once warned of a threat to their lives and had to take rapid evasive action.
In 1976 Frank returned to Germany as a major general to command the 2nd Armoured Division and after that it was back to UK as Commandant of the Staff College at Camberley.
On leaving the Staff College he became Deputy C in C UKLF at Wilton as well as the Inspector General of the Territorial Army. It was no surprise when, two years later, he moved up to be the Commander in Chief as a four star general and he became an ADC (General) to HM The Queen.
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