Major Colin Harrison
Soldier who helped bring Nazi war criminals to justice
MAJOR COLIN HARRISON, who has died aged 94, served with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and then became part of an operation to capture German war criminals and bring them to justice.
Harrison learned German at school and, after the end of the war in north-west Europe, for the next two years he was attached to Military Intelligence. He was a member of a rather undisciplined group, the majority of whom were British servicemen, but there were also Czechs, Germans and Austrians. Many of them had fled to England during the Nazi persecution of the Jews and had anglicised their names and joined the British Army.
There were parachutists and glider pilots, soldiers who had been on SOE operations in France and members of the SAS who had served in North Africa. The work took Harrison all over Germany, France, Belgium, and Denmark dealing with various crimes and in pursuit of Nazi war criminals.
Colin Leslie Harrison, the son of an officer who served with the Royal Artillery in the First World War, was born in Ipswich on November 20 1923. He was educated at Ipswich School and joined the Army in August 1942.
Having been commissioned, he was in Aldershot in an officer reinforcement camp on D-day and he and his comrades feared that the war would be over before they got to France. Against the advice of their adjutant, they were determined to join the invasion forces and were quickly placed on a draft.
Harrison landed at Arromanches and, in early July, he joined 323 Battery, 81st Field Regiment RA as a replacement for a wounded officer. The first night, he slept in a field. In the morning, he awoke to find that a brother officer had placed a red lantern by his feet. A regiment of tanks had driven past him while he slept.
His battery was in action throughout the rest of the campaign in Normandy and, in September, was deployed in Operation Market Garden. After the failure at Arnhem, they helped to deal with remaining resistance in south Holland. That winter, they supported the northern flank of the British 2nd Army during the Ardennes Campaign and, in February 1945, took part in the Battle of the Reichswald Forest.
Harrison finished the campaign in Hamburg. The 24 guns in his regiment had fired more than 300,000 rounds and were shipped back to England, their muzzles worn and much of their accuracy lost.
A fine athlete, in 1946 he represented the British Army of the Rhine in a relay race at Cologne against a Dutch team. The following year, he ran the 800 metres against a visiting team from Oxford University. This was won by Roger Bannister, later the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
In September 1947, Harrison went to Cambridge to read Geography. He beat the Olympic runner, Chris Brasher, in a mile race but lost to Bannister again in a meeting at Oxford. As an undergraduate, he took part in a surveying expedition to Zambia for the Colonial Office.
In 1950, after graduating, he went to Allhallows School at Rousdon, Devon, where he taught Geography. He moved to Shropshire in 1965 on being appointed headmaster of Bedstone College. By this time, his wife, Sally, was very ill and the family settled in Northamptonshire to be closer to the hospitals in London. She died in 1972.
After he remarried, he and his wife, Rosemary, travelled widely and enjoyed playing bridge together. He never lost his passion for athletics: a member of the Achilles Club, he regularly went back to Cambridge for dinners and meetings.
Colin Harrison married first, in 1953, Dorothy (Sally) Saunders, who predeceased him. He married secondly, in 1981, Rosemary Franklin, who survives him with the three sons of his first marriage.
Colin Harrison, born November 20 1923, died July 21 2018