Major-General Nigel Gribbon RIP

Kyt · Jan 23, 2009

Major-General Nigel Gribbon: assistant chief of staff at SHAPE | Times Online Obituary

Nigel Gribbon first saw active service in Iraq and more than 60 years later, after the second Gulf War of 2003, watched on television the struggle of British and American troops to keep control of the country that he had helped to pacify in 1941. His subsequent career had some unusual features but it was his restless energy that marked him out. At 87 he was leading the fight of his Country Houses Association to prevent other tenants and himself being evicted, after notice to quit from the new business owners.

The pro-German coup d’état in Baghdad in April 1941 led by the Iraqi General Rashid Ali was followed by a siege of the British Embassy and the RAF base at Habbaniya. The 1st Battalion The King’s Own Royal Regiment — with which Gribbon was serving — was flown from Karachi to Habbaniya, ostensibly to protect the airfield. The troops of the British-equipped and trained Iraqi Army surrounding it were reckoned to be a formidable proposition but, while the RAF bombed them, the King’s Own attacked, took the dominating low plateau and lifted the siege.

Although wounded in the action, Gribbon accompanied his battalion into Fallujah to secure the strategically important bridge over the Euphrates carrying the road from Baghdad (the same bridge that caused the US Army so much bitter fighting in 2004). The arrival of a column of the 1st Cavalry Division from Palestine and entry into Baghdad by the 10th Indian Division in June effectively concluded the campaign. The 1st King’s Own stayed on to guard the oilfields and pipelines for several months before joining 10th Indian Division in its long trek to the Western Desert.

On arrival in early 1942 Gribbon was appointed to the headquarters staff of 10th Indian Division in time for the indecisive desert battles, which ended with the 8th Army’s stand on the El Alamein line and the Ruweisat Ridge in front of Alam Halfa. Before the victory at El Alamein that autumn, Gribbon returned to India for the short wartime course at the Staff College, Quetta, after which his six years’ foreign service entitled him to return to England.

Hoping to be involved in the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, he was disappointed to find himself joining the staff of a formation responsible for part of the deception plan designed to convince the German High Command that the invasion was to be launched in the Pas de Calais area. This led him to volunteer for airborne forces but, although he completed his training before the end of the war in Europe, he was not involved in active operations again until sent to Palestine with the 6th Airborne Division.

This move was intended to deter any Soviet advance further into Persia beyond what had been agreed with the Western Allies. Gribbon, however, soon found himself heavily involved in the struggle to keep the peace in Palestine, while the two Jewish terrorists groups, Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, were busily destroying the country’s communications system. Eventually the Stern Gang blew up the King David Hotel in Jeruselem, largely occupied by the British headquarters staff.

For the next ten years Gribbon’s career followed the usual pattern of alternating regimental and staff appointments, except for his command of the 5th (Territorial Army) battalion of his regiment from 1958 to 1960. Chiefly because of lack of volunteers, the unit had run down to little more than cadre strength. His success in restoring it to operational viability over the next two years was recognised by his appointment as OBE in 1960.

He commanded number 161 Brigade of the Territorial Army from 1963 until 1965 and, after attending the Canadian National Defence Staff in Ottawa, began a new career phase with military intelligence. This was a particularly productive period for Anglo-American intelligence co-operation with the new, although at that stage still relatively primitive, US satellite reconnaissance providing a fresh dimension to the electronic and signal intelligence gathered and interpreted by both countries.

Gribbon was Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Intelligence) at Headquarters Northern Army Group in Germany, 1968-70. His appointment came immediately after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, after the “Prague Spring” of the reforming Alexander Dubcek, when Soviet Army and Air Force movements had been closely monitored by the US and UK intelligence-gathering systems. This proof of the practicality of American satellite observation resulted in a significant breakthrough of confidence in it, on both sides of the Atlantic, and the subsequent investment in its development.

Gribbon’s final military appointment in the rank of major-general was as Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence) at SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe), where he served until his retirement from the Army in 1973.

Nigel St George Gribbon was born in London in 1917 during a First World War zeppelin raid. He was the son of Brigadier W. H. Gribbon and as a child of 4 he lived in the Dolmabachi Palace, Constantinople, where his father was Chief of Staff to the commander of the British element of the postwar occupation army. He was educated at Rugby and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into his father’s old regiment in 1937.

He was a man of energy and exceptional charm and consideration for others. After leaving the Army he entered a wide variety of business, charity and other work. He was a director, managing director and chairman of various companies, director of the Falkland Islands Trust and a member of council of the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce 1979-89.

He served on the Canadian War Memorial Foundation, 1988-94, lectured on public affairs, organised chamber music concerts and served on the advisory committee of the Shackleton Memorial Fund. He was a Freeman of the City of London and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights.

He was married to Mary MacLeish in 1943. She survives him with two sons and a daughter.

Major-General N. StG. Gribbon, OBE, ACOS (Intelligence) SHAPE 1970-73, was born on February 6, 1917. He died on January 9, 2009, aged 91
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Antipodean Andy · Jan 26, 2009

Not a campaign mentioned too often. RIP.

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Major-General Nigel Gribbon RIP

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