‘He had no fear and was up for a fight. It was almost his finest hour’
Field Marshal Lord Bramall spent his final years battling false abuse claims – but his son Nicolas tells Joe Shute this should not overshadow his remarkable life
Field Marshal Lord Bramall ensured that he observed one final Remembrance Sunday. As the 11th hour struck, he watched from his deathbed the ceremony he had attended numerous times as Chief of the Defence staff. Two days later, the 95-year-old D-day veteran passed away peacefully at home in the Surrey village of Crondall.
Sitting in his father’s living room in his first interview since, his only son, Nicolas says the family has been inundated with tributes: “We’ve had so many letters, from riflemen to field marshals.”
Lord Bramall, known since childhood as Dwin, enjoyed a career that spanned half a century. Fresh out of officer cadet training, aged just 19, he stormed ashore Juno Beach on D-day as a platoon commander with the 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Pushing through Nazi-occupied Europe, he was awarded a Military Cross for fighting his way out of a German ambush armed with only a sten gun and grenades. He was given his ribbon by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, whose autobiography he kept in the downstairs loo.
Later, he served in Libya and Malaya, and commanded British forces in Hong Kong. By 1982, he had risen to the very top of the Army and oversaw the Falklands War. “Duty was always a big word in his life,” says Nicolas, 67.
But despite this lifetime of exemplary public service, his final years brought about one final fight. In 2015, 20 police officers raided his home one morning while he was having breakfast with his wife, Dorothy.
Nicolas recalls they were told only that there had been a “complaint lodged against him from 40 years ago”. Dorothy, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was shunted between rooms as police turned over their home of 30 years. Nicolas’s sister, Sara, was asked by an officer if Lord Bramall could be trusted around his great-grandchildren.
“Mum was very confused and thought she had done something wrong,” says Nicolas. “She knew something bad was happening, but didn’t know who it was directed at.” After months of agonising delay, the family discovered the full extent of the charges levelled against him: “Rape, buggery and torture,” Nicolas says, pointing out that some of the bogus offences were supposed to have occurred on Armistice Day. “You couldn’t imagine anything worse.”
We now know these allegations to have been the wicked fantasies of Carl Beech – initially known in the media as “Nick”. It transpired during his trial this summer that Beech, a former NHS worker, was himself a paedophile. He was sentenced to 18 years in jail for fraud and perverting the course of justice. It had taken more than four years to get justice and, tragically, Lady Bramall did not live to see her husband’s name cleared.
Nicolas insists his father was never cowed by the allegations – it helped that the Queen was among many to show her solidarity by inviting him to a reception at Buckingham Palace during the investigation. “He had no fear and was up for a fight,” he says. “It was almost his finest hour. He never took a step back and never hid away. When he walked to the village shop, he kept his head held high.”
But in his victim impact statement, Lord Bramall – who was wounded twice in action – said he had
“never been as badly wounded in all my time in the military” as by the allegations.
During his initial interview with the police, a video shows Lord
Bramall pounding the desk in anger.
Six weeks ago – in the same room we are sitting in now – Nicolas says that Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, and her deputy, visited to deliver a personal apology. The force also paid him around £100,000 in compensation. Nicolas, who has two children and five grandchildren, insists that as far as the family is concerned, the matter is far from finished.
After all, Sir Bernard Hoganhowe, Dame Cressida’s predecessor, has since been elevated to the Lords, while Steve Rodhouse, the police commander who led the inquiry, now occupies a top job at the National Crime Agency. Nicolas is also critical of Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, who raised the allegations in parliament and is standing down at this general election. “He fuelled the flames without a doubt,” he says. “I don’t know what his motives were but he definitely did.”
The police raid on Lord Bramall’s home has since been declared “illegal” by a retired high court judge, who conducted an inquiry. Nicolas insists there now needs to be a full-scale public inquiry. “If the raid was illegal and it was a crime, then it must be settled in a court of law,” he says. “Dad has done so much for his country. He was a model citizen never tainted by any impropriety and they treated him really appallingly.”
The family are rightly concerned that this late postscript should not overshadow the rest of his remarkable life: treasures of which are dotted about Lord Bramall’s house. He was a talented painter and a landscape of Sloane Square, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy, hangs above the fireplace. In the hall, next to a Gurkha Kukri knife (he was a former commanding officer of the 2nd Gurkhas) is a portrait he painted of Dorothy, twisting a necklace of pearls.
Nicolas and Sara (who is two years his senior) had a nomadic childhood, following their father around his various postings. He was educated at Eton where, even at an early age, he admits to having been intimidated by his father’s legacy. “He was a huge act to follow,” he says. “An impossible act.”
Instead of joining the military, Nicolas chose a career in horticulture and for the past 30 years has run his own landscape gardening business. Outside of the ceremonial uniform (his baton and medals were his two favourite possessions), he says his father was different to most top brass and describes him as a socialist who opposed Trident, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was most comfortable in his motheaten jumper and corduroy trousers.
Father and son, he says, were close and bonded over cricket. Another Lord Bramall painting depicts the Hong Kong cricket club where, aged 70, he scored a century. Later, he became president of Marylebone Cricket Club.
Like many of his generation, Lord Bramall would not say much about his experiences during the Normandy landings, but twice travelled to France with Nicolas. On the second occasion, he took his then 40-year-old son to a farmhouse where he was briefly billeted. “His generation did amazing things,” he says.
Lord Bramall was introduced to his wife by a soldier in his regiment. Dorothy came from a more aristocratic family and he proposed three times before she eventually agreed.
For much of their lives, his mother, Nicolas says, was a “brilliant support act” to his father’s career. But when her health began to decline, Lord Bramall became her devoted carer. “He was very affectionate with Mum,” he says. “They used to lie in bed together and hold hands. Dementia is a very difficult thing and he was exemplary really.”
Next week, Lord Bramall will be laid to rest next to his wife, wearing his old jungle fatigues from Malaya. “Dad always liked to joke that he was going somewhere hot,” says Nicolas. There will also be a memorial service held at Winchester Cathedral in a few months’ time. Always one to maintain an iron grip on proceedings, Lord Bramall left detailed requests for pomp and ceremony. Among the songs will be Dame Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.
Nicolas delivered a similar sentiment in his last communication with Dame Cressida Dick. “I told her, ‘You haven’t heard the last of it’,” he says.
‘Dad has done so much for his country. He was a model citizen and they treated him really appallingly’