Lord Elliott RIP

Kyt · Aug 26, 2008

Lord Elliott - Telegraph

Lord Elliott , who has died aged 85, was a deep-thinking intellectual lawyer but thoroughly down-to-earth when it came to ensuring that the interests of justice and fairness were served; during the war he won an immediate MC while serving with the Scots Guards.

As president of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland from 1971 to 1992, Elliott heard disputes over land and property; as chairman of the Scottish Land Court from 1978 to 1992 he dealt with cases relating to agriculture and crofters' rights, principally disputes between landlords and tenants. The combined workload was a heavy one, but Elliott earned the respect of all concerned.

He was admired for his ability to interpret increasingly complex, and often poorly drafted, statutes while always keeping in mind what was fair and reasonable. His sure grasp of the jurisprudential nature of obligations in relation to land produced Tribunal decisions which in effect re-cast Scottish law in that area. His chairmanship of the Land Court brought with it the Scots judicial title of Lord.

Walter Archibald Elliott was born in London on September 6 1922, the second son of TR Elliott, DSO, a gifted physician on the staff of University College Hospital, where he was to become the first Professor of Medicine, and his wife Martha (née McCosh), who came from a family with profitable industrial interests in Lanarkshire.

Young Archie grew up in a house in Cheyne Walk, by the Thames in London, and at Broughton Place, Peebleshire, a Scottish baronial pile set amidst grouse moors that was built for his parents by the young Basil Spence. After Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Archie Elliott was commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1942.

He joined the 2nd Battalion (2 SG), part of 201 Guards Brigade, in Tripolitania in August 1943, and three weeks later embarked for Italy, where he landed with his battalion at Salerno. On September 11, in command of the forward platoon, he led his men in a night attack on the tobacco factory to the west of Battipaglia. He charged with his first section and overran four Spandau posts. A grenade landed in a ditch at his feet but he was unscathed.

Elliott accounted for four of the enemy with his revolver and took 14 prisoners. His men, he said later, had reached their objective and were strutting around proud as peacocks when they spotted two German tanks that were clattering down the road and heading straight for them.

The road had high barbed wire fences on either side and was a death-trap. Cursing the moonlight and praying that the drivers could not see them, Elliott ordered his men to lie face downwards at the side of the road. The metal tracks passed within a few feet of them in a shower of sparks.

More German tanks were approaching; behind them stretched long lines of infantry. Elliott now found himself in the middle of a major enemy counter-attack. He ordered his leading section to get into a nearby house which, unknown to him, was full of Germans, and ran back to his platoon HQ in search of an anti-tank projector.

The Germans quickly overran the HQ and Elliott got stuck on a barbed wire fence under the very guns of the advancing tanks. Extricating himself somehow, he shouted to all his men within earshot to follow him into a ditch.

The Germans soon searched the ditch and extracted two of Elliott's party at gunpoint, but missed him and two of his comrades who were lying at full length in muddy water under a bramble bush.

The three men crawled along the ditch until it became impassable. They were so exhausted that they then dozed off, despite being within 20 yards of an enemy post. Elliott had to wake one of them because of his snores – but once he had been woken the man was seized by a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

The Germans started shouting to each other and came running towards Elliott and his companions, covered them with their Schmeisser machine-pistols and took them prisoner. They were bundled into a half-track, driven a few miles and spent the rest of the night on the lawn of a house under armed guard.

The next morning, a vicious-looking lieutenant ordered three of Elliott's men to dig a line of graves in front of where they were sitting. When the number of graves approached that of the members of his party – some 15 in all – Elliott feared that they might all be murdered, but a truckload of German bodies arrived and was unloaded and the corpses buried.

As they were being marched off to Divisional HQ for interrogation under the escort of a single, diminutive guard, they came under intense long-range naval shelling. When the group dived into a ditch to avoid a salvo, Elliott and a comrade escaped in the confusion and took to the mountains.

Some Italian soldiers, at great risk to themselves, sheltered and fed them and, after a week on the run, helped them return to the Allied bridgehead. Elliott was awarded an immediate MC; the citation paid tribute to his outstanding bravery and dash.

The battalion returned to Scotland in 1944 but was back in action in February 1945 when it joined the Guards Armoured Division near Brussels.

In March a shell burst at Elliott's feet while he was leading an attack, but almost miraculously he survived with minor shrapnel wounds. After a spell in hospital he refused sick leave and rejoined 2 SG near Lingen, before finishing the war on the Baltic.

After demobilisation in 1947, Elliott studied Law at Edinburgh University. He was called to both the English Bar (by Inner Temple) and the Scottish Bar in 1950. He was appointed QC (Scotland) in 1963. On three occasions between the late 1950s and 1970, he stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate for a parliamentary seat in Scotland.

He was chairman of the Medical Appeal Tribunals from 1971 to 1978, and retired from the Law in 1992, aged 70. A countryman at heart, he particularly enjoyed his time at the Land Court because the work took him all over Scotland, as far as the Western Isles.

Elliott was an Ensign, the Royal Company of Archers (Queen's Body Guard for Scotland). He wrote two books: Us and Them, a study of group consciousness (1986) and Esprit de Corps (1996), an account of his wartime experiences. The latter well demonstrated his gifts as a writer:

"When the scarlet tracers of the anti-aircraft guns had died away there would be silence again but for the grating of the crickets in the oleander trees and someone playing the accordion in the company lines. On the table in my tent I always had a vase of those most beautiful of African lilies, the pearl-white amaryllis, which grew wild nearby. Their perfume hung sweet and heavy on the desert night. Below our encampment the ground sloped gradually away to a Mediterranean lit fitfully by the moon – and the occasional flashes of anti-aircraft guns."

Archie Elliott died on August 9. He married, in 1954, Susan MacKenzie Ross, who survives him with their two sons.
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liverpool annie · Aug 28, 2008

Kyt said: ↑

Lord Elliott - Telegraph
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Here's a photo ... RIP Walter Archibald Elliott

Antipodean Andy · Aug 28, 2008

Looks a bit cheeky! RIP.

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