Thursday - August 14, 2008

AN OBIT FOR A BATTLING BRIT FROM ANOTHER TIME. RIP COLONEL JOHNSON.

THIS IS A FAIRLY LONG STORY BUT FASCINATING OR IT WOULDN’T BE HERE.  THIS MAN WAS MOSTLY UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE, AND THIS READS LIKE AN IAN FLEMMING STORY.  THIS IS HOW THE TELEGRAPH DOES OBITS ON THOSE WHO’VE PASSED AND LEFT A STORY BEHIND THEM.  IN OTHER WORDS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE FAMOUS.

BRITS HAVE BEEN PRETTY DARN GOOD AT THIS IN THE PAST.  COULD DO WITH ANOTHER ENTIRE GENERATION LIKE HIM.  BUT HEALTH AND SAFETY ACTS WOULDN’T ALLOW FOR IT.  MORE’S THE PITY AND SAD FOR ENGLAND AS WELL.

Colonel Jim Johnson
Former SAS officer who in the 1960s led a three-year guerrilla campaign against Egyptian forces in Yemen.

Colonel Jim Johnson, who has died aged 83, was responsible for running Britain’s clandestine war against Egyptian forces in Yemen during the mid-1960s, an experience that inspired him to set up Britain’s first post-war private military company.

Six years after the allied withdrawal from Suez in 1956, the Yemeni monarchy fell victim to a military coup staged by Egyptian-trained officers, an event which served as a warning to the British protectorates of Aden and Oman.

In London the Macmillan cabinet was divided between those who were ready to recognise the new Yemeni regime (the approach taken by Washington) and those who favoured supporting a guerrilla campaign of resistance on behalf of the displaced ruler, Imam al Badr, who had been forced to retreat into the hills.

As the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) dithered, Colonel David Stirling, founder of the Special Air Service (SAS), suggested that Jim Johnson, a retired SAS officer, “put something together”. Johnson was then asked if he might be willing to go to Yemen to destroy the Egyptian Mig aircraft which were bombing tribes loyal to Imam al Badr with phosgene poison gas; and there followed an adventure that would have done credit to Bulldog Drummond.

Weapons of indeterminate origin were stored at Johnson’s home in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, for use by former SAS regulars and reservists, some of whom had left the Army to take part in the operation.
Among the leaders selected for the operation were Colonel John Woodhouse, a prominent figure in the fortunes of the post-war SAS, and Major John Cooper, David Stirling’s wartime driver, who was now working as a professional freelance soldier.

A cheque for £5,000, signed by the Imam al Badr’s foreign minister, was paid through the bank account of the Hyde Park Hotel, where the SAS’s colonel commandant, Brian Franks, was chairman of the board.
Johnson took leave of absence from his job as a Lloyd’s underwriter and recruited a number of French mercenaries, among them Colonel Roger Faulques, a veteran of the Foreign Legion, and the notorious Robert Denard.

Then, the day before the first reconnaissance team, led by John Cooper, was due to leave London, Macmillan’s war minister, John Profumo, resigned because he had lied to the House of Commons. The Foreign Office now became concerned by the possibility of political embarrassment, and it seemed as if the Yemeni operation might be called off.
Johnson, however, reasoned that SIS would probably not put the brakes on before the relevant duty officer took over at 9am the next morning, and Cooper’s team left the country.

When David Stirling then received a telephone call from the Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, he denied any knowledge. Immediately afterwards Stirling then rang Johnson, who told him: “Too late. They are half way across already.”
While they were changing planes in Libya, one of Cooper’s suitcases broke open and rolls of plastic explosive spilled out; he explained that the substance was marzipan, and the Libyans obligingly helped with the repacking.

(Marzipan is an almond and sugar paste used to ice cakes and other pastries or sculpted into a variety of shapes to be eaten as candy or used as cake decorations. Marzipan is simply a mixture of almond paste, powdered sugar, and a moistening agent such as water, corn syrup, glucose, fondant, or egg whites. After the ingredients are mixed, marzipan reaches a consistency of dough or soft rubber and can be rolled, shaped, cut, or molded.)

After the team had arrived in Yemen, supplies were dropped from a variety of aircraft – some of them Israeli – using the drop-zone expertise Cooper had acquired during the war in Occupied Europe. Johnson himself flew in to Yemen later, on a Canadian passport in the name of Cohen and with a pocketful of gold sovereigns.

Over the next three years he and his men conducted a resistance campaign, wearing down the Egyptian forces sent in by Nasser. The Saudi Arabian government, meanwhile, funded the Yemeni royalist faction and dictated overall strategy, but the hostilities became a war of attrition which eventually led to stalemate. Nevertheless, the Egyptians lost 10,000 men. “Yemen,” Nasser later reflected, “was my Vietnam.”

Henry James Johnson born on December 21 1924, the son of a Ceylon tea planter who was employed on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park during the Second World War; one of his forebears had been a soldier in the privatised East India Company army who had later guarded Napoleon on St Helena.
The young Jim was educated at Westminster, where he was a contemporary of Tony Benn, and as a schoolboy he joined the Home Guard.

Subsequently he was serving as a junior officer with the 2nd Battalion, Welsh Guards, near Caen in 1944 when the artist Rex Whistler was killed.

After his unit had liberated Brussels, he was involved in the hard fighting across northern Germany until he and a brother officer found themselves on the steps of Cologne cathedral. As two armed Wehrmacht officers ran past them, Johnson reached for his revolver, but his companion exclaimed: “No, Jim! Not from the cathedral.”
After the war Johnson joined Lloyd’s, and in his spare time rose to command 21 SAS (TA). On retiring from the TA in 1963 he was appointed OBE, and was later appointed ADC to the Queen.

After his three years running the operation in Yemen, Johnson wrote a memorandum for the British and Saudi governments pointing to “the apparent lack of interest by HMG and the stated indifference to our activities by MI6”, and the “absolute disinterest” of the Saudis. He identified three possible policies in such circumstances: to withdraw; to replace resistance with intelligence-gathering; or to “hang on… and hope we will be used sensibly again”. But he added the reminder that the operation had “discovered, trained and helped arm tens of thousands of tribesmen without official help”.

In 1975 Johnson and David Walker, a former regular officer in 22 SAS, set up their firm to operate in the grey area between the politically acceptable and the officially deniable. Having begun by providing protection for British diplomats in South America, and then for foreign statesmen, the firm trained mujahideen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

It also made a substantial contribution to the defence of Oman after the British-backed victory over Communist forces in that country. KMS was allowed by Whitehall to set up the Sultan’s Special Force, an elite unit modelled on the SAS and trained by former SAS personnel. Now “omanised”, it remains an integral part of the country’s armed forces.
In later years Johnson recalled that, during his final audience with a member of the Saudi royal family after leaving Yemen, he had made two requests. These were for the orderly disposal of the heavy weapons, particularly mortars, under his control, and for his men to receive an enhanced month’s severance pay. He had added: “French mercenaries have a habit of blowing up the aircraft of national airlines if they don’t get paid properly.”

Both his requests were granted, and Johnson and his comrades celebrated with champagne a month later at the Hyde Park Hotel.
The final reunion of those who took part in the Yemen operation was attended by eight survivors last year.
Jim Johnson died on July 20. His first wife was Judith Lyttleton, with whom he had a son and a daughter. After her death he married, in 1982, Jan Gay.

http://tinyurl.com/57mxu6

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 11:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes • UK • War-Stories •  
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