May 15 2000

GENERAL SIR MARTIN FARNDALE

Gunner who in retirement inspired the project to build a Royal Artillery Museum at Woolwich

General Sir Martin Farndale, KCB, C-in-C BAOR and Commander Northern Army Group, 1985-87, was born on January 6, 1929. He died on May 10 aged 71

MARTIN FARNDALE might well have become the Chief of General Staff — the professional head of the Army — if timings had fitted better and if the Falklands campaign of 1982 had not swung defence thinking away from its over-emphasis upon European defence towards the greater likelihood of threats arising outside the Nato area. The latter half of Farndale's career had been centred almost exclusively upon the British Army of the Rhine. He commanded in succession its 7th Armoured Brigade, 2nd Armoured Division, 1st British Corps and finally, in 1985, BAOR and Northern Army Group, giving him a European Central Front bias at a time when rapid reaction forces for worldwide deployment were coming into vogue.

Martin Baker Farndale was born in Alberta, Canada, of Yorkshire parentage and brought up and educated back in Yorkshire at Yorebridge School. He was just too young to see service in the Second World War, but joined the Indian Army in 1946.

After Indian Independence in 1947, he transferred to the British Army and was sent to Sandhurst, which had just reopened as the Royal Military Academy. He was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Artillery in 1948.

Farndale was rather a private person with the single-mindedness of purpose and professional integrity needed for a successful military career. He was always "on duty" in both an intellectual and military sense, and although he was punctilious about military niceties he was, paradoxically, relaxed and approachable with a typical Yorkshire forthrightness. These qualities made him immensely respected and liked throughout the Army.

His hallmarks were enthusiasm for the matter in hand and avoidance of self-advertisement. He was, indeed, a generous, humane and caring man with more than a touch of humility.

He started his military career in the 80th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment in the Suez Canal Zone, but his command abilities were soon recognised with his selection for the elite Royal Horse Artillery. He joined 1st Regiment RHA in 1950 with which he was to serve on and off for the next twenty-one years.

During his first tour he was in E and then B Batteries in BAOR. His abilities as a potential staff officer were equally quickly recognised when he was posted to the Royal Artillery Staff of 7th Armoured Division at Verden, Lower Saxony, in 1954. He went to the Staff College, Camberley, in 1959 after a spell with 53rd (Louisberg) Battery and as Adjutant of the 22nd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment. At Camberley he showed himself to be exceptionally articulate, both verbally and on paper, with a sensible balanced approach and a nice sense of humour. He was perhaps disappointed not to get a General Staff appointment after graduating. Instead he was sent to the Gunner staff with 17th Gurkha Division in the Far East, where he saw active service during the final phases of the Malayan campaign.

His first General Staff appointment came in 1963 when he served for two years in the Military Operations Directorate of the War Office and then the Ministry of Defence during the withdrawal from Empire of the mid-1960s, in which he was soon to be involved personally. He returned to 1st RHA in 1964 in command of the Chestnut Troop, which he took out to Aden for the Radfan campaign, fought in the arid mountains of the Protectorate.

His outstanding abilities were recognised when he went back to the Staff College for three years as an instructor in 1966, and was then given command of 1st RHA in 1969. He had the unique distinction of being the first artillery commanding officer to take his regiment to Northern Ireland to serve as infantry on the streets of Belfast in the earliest years of the Troubles.

Two years followed on the Defence Policy Staff in the Ministry of Defence while the Heath Government was trying unsuccessfully to reverse the British military cutbacks set in train by Denis Healey’s defence reviews. In 1973 he was promoted to brigadier and started his rise to high command.

His first major command was in Germany with 7th Armoured Brigade at Soltau in Lower Saxony. His easy fluency with the press and media led to him becoming a highly successful Director of the Army’s Public Relations before he was promoted major-general as the Director of Military Operations from 1978 to 1980 during the final phases of the guerrilla campaign in Rhodesia in the aftermath of Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence. He was largely responsible for setting up the British Monitoring Force, which helped to end the guerrilla war and to bring about an independent Zimbabwe.

He was back in BAOR commanding, in succession, and without any further breaks away on the Staff: 2nd Armoured Division, 1981-83; 1st British Corps, 1983-85; and finally Northern Army Group and BAOR, 1985-87.

He became very much a Nato man, and was widely respected in international military circles for his deep understanding of continental warfare as it might have been fought in the 1980s. He was appointed CB in 1980 and KCB in 1983.

Farndale retired from the Army in January 1988 and took up a number of appointments connected with the armaments industry. Since 1988 he had been a defence adviser to Deloitte Touche, and he was also a consultant to Somerset-based Westland Helicopters, 1989-95. He was also a very active chairman of the Royal United Services Institution.

His principal hobby was writing definitive histories of the Royal Artillery to which he was devoted: His History of the Royal Artillery, France, 1914-18 was published in 1987 and his History of the Royal Artillery; The Forgotten Fronts and the Home Base, 1914-18, in 1988.

He was also the author of volume V of The History of the Royal Artillery in the Second World War (The Years of Defeat, 1939-41) which appeared in 1996, and of volume VI (The Far East Theatre, 1941-46), which will be published posthumously.

He was thus a happy choice as Master Gunner of St James’s Park, the honorary appointment that he assumed in November 1988 as well as being Colonel Commandant of the RHA, Honorary Colonel of 1st Regiment RHA and of the 3rd Battalion, the Yorkshire Volunteers — his home county — and Colonel Commandant of the Army Air Corps.

From 1989 Farndale championed the Royal Artillery Museum Project to create a new museum in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich to house the vast regimental collection of guns, medals, books and archives. He became president and later chairman of the project, and it was through his inspiration, leadership and his abundant reserves of forceful energy that money was raised from a variety of sources: the regiment itself, industry, individual benefactors, trusts and national funds. He lived to see the start of the building programme which is scheduled to culminate in the opening of the new museum in May next year.

In 1955 he married Margaret Anne Buckingham. They had one son, who followed his father into the Royal Artillery. Both wife and son survive him.