Frank Giblett
Bomb disposal expert awarded a George Medal in Cyprus during the Eoka terrorist campaign
FRANK GIBLETT, who has died aged 93, was awarded a George Medal for bomb disposal operations in Cyprus during the Eoka campaign. In the 1950s Eoka, the Greek-cypriot paramilitary organisation, fought to end British rule in Cyprus and achieve union with Greece. Giblett, a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), was attached to the Larnaca Civil Police and served as a bomb disposal expert between 1956 and 1959. He was on continuous 24-hour call to examine and dispose of all Eoka devices in his area.
In February 1957, in a large petrol depot, he disarmed a new type of time-bomb fitted with a hidden time-pencil and trembler fuse. The time-pencil fired shortly after it was removed. His action averted a major disaster and heavy loss of life.
A few days later he went with a raiding party to a hide which Eoka terrorists had been using. He cleared it of booby-traps including a “Red Devil” Italian hand grenade.
In August 1958, Giblett went to a local
village and removed an electrical mine for further examination. It was set to explode on very slight pressure. A comrade had been killed the day before while attempting to neutralise a similar device. “His courage,” the citation for the award to him of a GM stated, “is of the highest order.”
Francis George Giblett was born in London on July 11 1928. His father, Jack, was a regimental featherweight champion boxer during the First World War. Always known as Frank, he was educated at Highbury County Grammar School before being conscripted into the Army in 1946. He subsequently signed up as a regular and served with the RAOC in Germany, Belgium and Cyprus.
In Cyprus, to avoid discovery of his real job by the Eoka, he served mainly as a civilian and carried identification papers as a British policeman. During almost three years of bomb disposal duties, he took no leave.
The work could be gruesome. On one occasion, as he entered the prosecutor’s office, the security staff insisted that he open the bag he was carrying. It contained a human foot, evidence of all that was left of a terrorist who was killed while making explosives.
While blowing up a hide, it was prudent to listen to the voice of experience. A sergeant in a raiding party disobeyed instructions to withdraw to a hundred yards from the site. The man insisted that the safest place to stand was next to the disposal expert setting off the charges.
After the explosion, when the dust cleared, the sergeant was seen to be flat on his back having been knocked out by a falling rock.
Giblett retired from the Army in 1972 in the rank of Warrant Officer 1 (WO1 CDR).
He worked as a materials manager, initially for the petrol and natural gas company Conocophillips in Lincolnshire for 10 years and then in Libya. He was a postmaster at Norwich for three years before finally retiring in 1993 and settling in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
Frank Giblett married, in 1951, Diana Moon. She predeceased him and he is survived by their two sons.