Captain Gerald Bryan
Commando who was wounded at the Litani River and survived a tricky encounter with Lord Lovat
CAPTAIN GERALD BRYAN, who has died aged 96, won an MC in 1941 as a commando at the Battle of the Litani River and subsequently proved himself an outstanding administrator in the Colonial Service.
In June 1941 Bryan was in command of a section of a troop of No 11 (Scottish) Commando in an attack on a large force of Vichy French. The French were guarding the Litani River, which was a formidable obstacle in the path of the Australian 21st Infantry Brigade’s advance from Palestine to Syria via the Lebanon.
On the brilliant, moonlit night of June 7, the vessel Glengyle, carrying 11 Commando, arrived off the mouth of the river. The landing craft were unable to get ashore because of heavy surf along the beaches and the operation was postponed until the early hours of June 9. By this time, the French had been alerted, one of the two bridges across the river had been demolished, and heavy opposition was expected.
Bryan was armed with a rifle, a pistol, a fighting knife and grenades. He and his men wore helmets camouflaged with sacking, khaki shirts and shorts, and their hands and faces were streaked with burnt cork. As soon as they got ashore, they came under rapid fire from a 75-mm gun and were reduced to seven.
Bryan threw a grenade, which silenced the gun and drove its crew into a slit trench. After fierce close-quarter fighting, they captured the gun, turned it around, knocked out the remaining guns in the battery and blew up the ammunition dump.
He and a few survivors then had to cross several hundred yards of open ground under constant fire. Bryan was severely wounded in both legs and, after being taken prisoner, was moved to a casualty clearing station at Sidon. About a third of the commandos who landed became casualties. Bryan was awarded an MC several months later.
Gerald Jackson Bryan was born on April 2 1921 in Belfast, where his father was chief local government auditor. Young Gerald, whose father died when he was eight, was educated at Wrekin College, Shropshire, where he twice won the boxing competition at his weight and was captain of gymnastics and fencing.
He gained third place in the Army Entrance Exam and went on to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. After officer cadet training, in 1940 he was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers.
He subsequently volunteered for the Commandos and was posted to No 9 Commando, based at Lord Cawdor’s estate on the Pembrokeshire coast. At a training centre at Lochailort, near Fort William, he was taught how to shoot with a pistol and a Tommy gun, and close-quarter fighting. On a night exercise, he had felled a tree with gelignite to create a roadblock when he saw a figure striding down the drive.
Assuming that the man was one of the “enemy”, he wrestled him to the ground. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked. “No,” said Bryan.
“I’m Lord Lovat,” came the reply. Bryan felt that he had only one card worth playing. “Do you know who I am?” he riposted.
“No,” said Lovat in bewilderment. “Thank God!” exclaimed Bryan – and escaped into the darkness.
Further training took place on the Isle of Arran. Bryan was an experienced rock climber and, when his unit was paired with No 11 (Scottish) Commando, he transferred to that unit and passed on his skills. One of his companions in the house in which he was billeted was “Paddy” Mayne, who later became a founding member of the SAS and one of the most highly decorated British officers of the Second World War.
On New Year’s Eve 1940, Bryan, calling on Mayne to give him his good wishes, found him seated on the floor surrounded by three dozen small bottles of cherry brandy. He was celebrating on his own and was not in a good humour. He knocked Bryan to the floor, chased him out of the house into the night, fired his Colt automatic after the retreating figure and then shot out all the windows in the living room.
In January 1941 Bryan embarked for Suez, where his unit became part of Layforce. After the Litani River battle, he was operated on at the French Military Hospital, Beirut, and his right leg was amputated below the knee. He was reported missing, and it was two months before his mother heard that he was alive.
The Vichy French had suffered heavy losses and sued for an armistice. Bryan was moved to a British base hospital in Jerusalem to recuperate. Further operations followed at a hospital in Natal before he was repatriated.
In February 1943 he joined the staff of the Engineer in Chief, London district, as liaison officer with Experimental Station 6, War Department, at Knebworth. This turned out to be part of Special Operations Executive’s organisation.
He tested the efficiency of dropping containers by parachute from a high altitude, short-wave radio telephones, scaling ladders for use by Commandos, and itching powder for contaminating the underclothes of enemy troops. He was eventually appointed Director of Scientific Research (Operational Planning) in the rank of major and worked at 64 Baker Street.
He resigned from the Army in August 1944 and, having joined the Colonial Service, was posted to Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland, as Assistant District Commissioner. George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the country with their two daughters in 1947. Group Captain Peter Townsend, an equerry, was one of the royal party.
In 1949 Bryan went up to New College, Oxford, for two terms and took a postgraduate degree. He married while he was in Swaziland and, in 1950, he and his wife Wendy moved to Barbados, where he took up the post of Assistant Colonial Secretary and, later, Acting Financial Secretary.
In 1954 he was posted to Mauritius as Establishment Secretary. Shortly before the end of his tour, the aircraft carrying Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, to Kenya en route to England was due to land at Plaisance Airport, on Mauritius, for an hour to refuel. In the event, it made an emergency landing with one engine on fire and Bryan had the task of looking after the royal entourage for three days.
He served in the British Virgin Islands and then St Lucia as Administrator. In the latter post, with an adroit mixture of political nous, firmness and charm, he succeeded in restoring discipline and morale throughout the police force, and respect for the government and the administration. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh made a most successful visit to the island in the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1966.
Bryan was Government Secretary to the Isle of Man from 1967 to 1969, and general manager of the Londonderry Development Commission from 1969 to 1973. With IRA activity increasing throughout Northern Ireland, unrelenting pressure of work and wide-ranging responsibilities, that was a most exacting assignment.
When the commission was wound up, Bryan became general manager of the Bracknell Development Corporation. He retired in 1982 but for the next nine years he was an independent inquiry inspector on the Lord Chancellor’s Panel.
He was appointed OBE in 1960, CMG in 1964 and CVO in 1966. He published an autobiography, Be of Good Cheer, in 2008.
Gerald Bryan married, in 1947, Georgiana Wendy Cockburn Hull who was born in the Transvaal and whom he met in Swaziland. She predeceased him and he is survived by their two daughters and a son.
Captain Gerald Bryan, born April 2 1921, died March 21 2018