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London Daily Telegraph

General Sir David Mostyn

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 29/01/2007

General Sir David Mostyn, who has died aged 78, was Adjutant-General from 1986 to 1988; as a young officer in the Green Jackets he played an important role in suppressing a rebellion in Brunei.

In December 1962 an insurrection broke out in the British Protectorate of Brunei, and 1st Green Jackets (1GJ), based at Penang, Malaya, moved at short notice to Singapore and embarked in the cruiser, Tiger. The ship was designed to accommodate no more than 400 troops, and, as the last of the 619 men filed on board, the captain was heard to exclaim: "For God's sake, let's sail before we sink!"

Off Sarawak, new orders arrived. Part of the force was to be off-loaded on the coast at Miri, a town which had no deep-water port. Mostyn, then a major in command of "B" Company, had to requisition a number of former landing craft from Shell to get his men and their equipment ashore.

At Miri, he learned that the rebels held the police and administrative post of Bekenu, 25 miles to the south. He was ordered to re-take the post with his company and two sections of the Sarawak Field Force (SFF).

Mostyn had good reason to fear that, if he attempted an amphibious assault and took his force 10 miles up the Sibuti river, the rebels would ambush him. So he sent just one platoon in a launch by that route with orders to lie up in the rushes short of Bekenu and provide flanking fire.

The main force was to land at a small coastal village, but their craft was laden with oil-drilling equipment and grounded on a sandbank 50 yards from the shore. The skipper claimed that they were in 4ft of water, but the first man off stepped straight into 7ft, and it took an hour to get him and everybody else on to dry land. The party, guided by a section of the SFF, set off on a night march through thick jungle and mangrove swamps. A report reached them that the insurgents were lying in wait for them, and they took a circuitous track, crossing a river using native dugout canoes and covering the last half mile along tree trunks laid over a marsh.

When they reached the outskirts of the town, "Mostyn's Marauders" had been going for 16 hours. Just before 10am on December 13 Mostyn gave the order to move in. The rebels were so cocksure that they were busy appointing new civil servants when they looked through the windows of the government offices and saw the riflemen emerging from a pepper plantation and advancing towards them.

They fired off their single-barrelled shotguns and then, as they tried to escape in a boat, they were confronted by the well-armed launch-borne platoon. By the end of the battle six rebels were dead, five had been captured, while about a dozen had escaped.

When Mostyn saw one of the wounded rebels being beaten up in an attempt to obtain information from him, he put a stop to it at once. The man was so impressed by this humane treatment that he revealed the location of their main camp.

"How many will there be for lunch, sir?" enquired a beaming, recently released government official. "We had no casualties," Mostyn replied. "So it will be 90."

He was mentioned in dispatches.

Joseph David Frederick Mostyn was born in London on November 28 1928. His father died when he was a few weeks old and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle, Tom Tyrwhitt-Drake, at the Shardeloes estate at Amersham, Buckinghamshire.

David was educated at Downside before going to Sandhurst, where he represented the RMA at rugby and was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1948.

He served in Germany, Greece and Cyprus before going to the Canadian Army Staff College in 1958. This was followed by two years at the War Office on the operational desk for the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa.

After a hectic tour covering a crisis in Kuwait, Aden, Rhodesia, a plebiscite in the Cameroons, Cyprus Independence and British Guiana, he was appointed MBE.

In 1962 Mostyn returned to his regiment – re-designated the 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets (1 RGJ) – as a company commander and served in Malaya, in Brunei during the revolt of 1962 and Borneo during the "confrontation" with Indonesia.

Following a spell as an instructor at Staff College and a posting to the MoD as AQMG, he commanded 2 RGJ in BAOR and Northern Ireland. After a year running the Tactics Wing at the School of Infantry, Mostyn returned to Londonderry to command 8th Infantry Brigade. The success of this arduous tour was recognised by his advancement to CBE.

After tours as deputy director of Army Training, attendance at the Royal College of Defence Studies and a staff job at BAOR, he was promoted major-general in 1978 and appointed Director of Personal Services (Army). There he helped to win substantial improvements in pay and conditions of service.

Mostyn was GOC Berlin and Commandant British Sector from 1980 to 1983 and helped to make Hess's treatment in Spandau Prison more humane. On one occasion, during a rehearsal for the Queen's Birthday Parade, his horse bolted when the band struck up. Legend has it that the beast made three circuits of the arena before being brought under control; but the rider was a good horseman, and it seems likely that something less remarkable occurred.

Mostyn was knighted in 1984. He was Military Secretary from 1983 to 1986 and then took over as Adjutant-General. Serious recruiting problems for the Army were forecast and, as a member of the Army Board, he fought a vigorous campaign against the bullying that gave the Army a bad press in the 1980s. He also initiated studies that led to the wider use of women in the Army and the establishment of the Adjutant-General's Corps.

Before retiring in 1988 Mostyn's last duty was to take the Sovereign's Parade at Sandhurst on the 40th anniversary of his commissioning. He was ADC General to the Queen from 1987 to 1989, and Colonel Commandant of the Light Division from 1983 to 1986 and of the Army Legal Corps from 1983 to 1988.

In 1964 Mostyn inherited a small estate on the Devonshire-Dorset borders which became his home.

He was Special Commissioner Duke of York's Royal Military School; president of the Army Boxing and Swimming Association; and chairman of the Army Beagling Association. He was also prominent in other local organisations, including being chairman of the Lyme Regis Hospital Trust and director of Joseph Weld Hospice, Dorchester.

David Mostyn died on January 20. He married, in 1952, Diana Sheridan, who survives him with their four sons and two daughters.


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Can I ask whether he received his PJM before he died?

Yours Aye

Arthur

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Arthur R-S wrote:
Can I ask whether he received his PJM before he died?

Yours Aye

Arthur


Arthur, I have no idea. I was just the messenger on this occasion.


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