Major Jock Haswell
Faced brigands, Vichy forces and enemy agents in Somaliland
MAJOR JOCK HASWELL, who has died aged 98, soldiered in India, East Africa and Germany before retiring from the Army and moving to the Joint Services School of Intelligence.
In 1939, Haswell joined the 1st Bn The Queen’s Royal Regiment (1 QRR) which formed part of the garrison at Razmak, Waziristan, on the North West Frontier. The marksmanship of the Pathan tribesmen meant that soldiers in the open had to keep on the move to lessen the chances of being hit. Haswell was deployed on operations against the Faqir of Ipi whose followers lived by brigandage.
In 1942 he was seconded to 2nd Bn, 1st King’s African Rifles (2/1 KAR) and posted to East Africa Command in Kenya. On arrival at Mombasa, the movements officer told him that the troopship had been reported sunk by enemy action. Officially, he added, everyone on board was dead and it was very inconvenient that they had come to life again because all the paperwork would have to be redone.
Later that year he led his company in a successful operation against forces of French Somaliland which was loyal to Vichy. After ambushing a camel caravan bringing supplies to Djibouti, he escorted two of their generals into captivity.
In Mogadishu, Italian Somaliland, an enemy agent in the form of an attractive woman tried to seduce him but failed. An expedition to deal with bandits under cover of darkness nearly ended in tragedy when his company surrounded their camp. The thugs had run off and when the African soldiers poured a fusillade of fire into it they were dismayed to find that they were shooting at each other.
In 1944, Haswell was posted to Madagascar, where he had a staff job with the garrison. The following year, he moved to South East Asia Command at Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he served in Mountbatten’s HQ. During a posting to HQ Burma Command, Rangoon, he set up his office in a lecture theatre at the city’s university. There he interviewed the Africans who had fought so bravely for the Allies and arranged their safe passage home.
Haswell served with 2 QRR in 1948 during the Berlin Blockade. A job instructing at the Officer Cadet School at Eaton Hall was followed by a series of postings in BAOR. He proved to be an outstanding staff officer but there were issues with his health and he did not attend Staff College or progress to command his battalion. In 1960, aged 40, he retired from the Army.
Chetwynd John Drake Haswell was born at Penn, Buckinghamshire, on July 18 1919. His father, Chetwynd, a distinguished military engineer, was a member of Lieutenant-colonel Sir Francis Younghusband’s expedition to Tibet in 1902.
While his parents were in India, Jock spent much of his childhood with his grandmother in the Isle of Wight. He was educated at Winchester College, where he was head of his house, and went on to Sandhurst.
After retiring from the Army, in the course of eight years in industry he established a public relations and marketing company before moving to the newly formed Joint Services School of Intelligence at Ashford, Kent. He also researched and wrote a series of books on military history.
These started with The First Respectable Spy, an account of the life of Colquhoun Grant, Wellington’s Head of Intelligence. They included a number of books on spies and spying, a history of his regiment and the story of the deception tactics that were used to disguise the fact that the Normandy beaches had been selected for the main D-day assault. He also wrote the Nato doctrine manuals on intelligence and deception.
Major Jock Haswell married, in 1947, Annette Petter. She predeceased him and he is survived by their daughter and two sons.
Major Jock Haswell, born July 18 1919, died January 21 2018