Obituary for General Sir Peter Leng KCB MBE MC

Obituary for General Sir Peter Leng KCB MBE MC

When he returned from Northern Ireland in 1975 to become Director of Military Operations in the Ministry of Defence, it was even money on Peter Leng becoming, in due course, Chief of the General Staff and Head of the Army.

He had proved to be a courageous and resourceful junior officer in the closing stage of the 1944-45 North-West European campaign, had commanded a battalion on active service in Aden, a brigade in the UK Strategic Reserve and had brought about a significant improvement in the Northern Ireland security situation. Yet, although he became a four-star general and a member of the Army Board, the top job eluded him.

Peter John Hall Leng was born in 1925. He was educated at Bradfield College, Berkshire, and commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1944. He served with the 2nd Battalion in the Guards Armoured Division during the advance into the Netherlands and Germany and was awarded an immediate MC for his determination, leadership and gallantry in the actions to secure the villages of Visselhövede and Ottingen, 30 miles east of Bremen, in April 1945. Taking command of two platoons whose officers had been killed, he captured all the company’s objectives and more than 60 prisoners. Later, he was wounded during the advance on Hamburg.

After the war he was seen as something of a loner, both in his regimental service and as a junior staff officer. His first real break came in June 1959 when he was appointed Military Assistant to the Chief of Defence Staff, Earl Mountbatten of Burma. He returned to 2nd Scots Guards as second-in-command in 1962 and, on promotion to brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1964, was transferred to The Royal Anglian Regiment to command the 3rd Battalion in Berlin and on active service in Aden, where the security situation was deteriorating rapidly.

As a brigadier, he commanded 24th Infantry Brigade in the United Kingdom Strategic Reserve until going to the Ministry of Defence to be Deputy Military Secretary in 1970. His appointment as Commander Land Forces Northern Ireland came at the height of the IRA bombing and shooting campaign of 1973, when the rate of incidents reached its peak of 12,000 during the year and there was no sign of the violence abating.

He showed originality of mind and determination to discover new ways of defeating the terrorists, so forming an excellent partnership with Lieutenant-General Sir Frank King, the GOC, complementing King’s robust orthodoxy with his own ingenuity. He was a strong and charismatic leader and no stranger to counter-terrorist operations, having served with the Scots Guards and Guards Independent Parachute Company in the Middle East in the early 1950s. His familiarity with Ulster dated from his time as chief of staff of the resident 39th Infantry Brigade in 1957-59.

Although some of his proposals proved impractical, if his subordinates and staff could produce sounder alternatives he would readily accept their proposals. Whenever some new terrorist tactic became apparent, he would hold a study period with his senior commanders and staff to which Ministry of Defence scientists and other experts would be invited. Much of the early anti-terrorist operating procedures and equipment were developed from these brain-storming sessions.

His remarkable physical stamina allowed him to spend much of his time with the soldiers and policemen on the ground, finding out for himself the reality of the conditions and the practical problems that they had to face, and making changes in commanders and techniques wherever they were needed. His support for his staff was as strong as his directions were clear, and by the time he left Northern Ireland, in June 1975, bombing and shooting incidents in the Province had dropped to a fifth of what they had been when he arrived.

As Director of Military Operations in the Ministry of Defence from 1975 to 1978 he was faced with the task of implementing the last of the Labour Government’s Defence Reviews, which turned the Army primarily into a continental force with only the minimum number of troops still assigned to commitments outside the Nato area.

It was not a happy time to be in Whitehall with the cutbacks caused by the 1976 sterling crisis, which inhibited many aspects of military training and other activity. His promotion to lieutenant-general to command the 1st (British) Corps in Germany in 1978 came as something of a relief to him after struggling to make military ends meet in Whitehall; it was this nomination that led many observers to expect him eventually to reach the Army’s top job.

Except for the period in Berlin, Germany had not been his scene since the war and he was in no sense a “BAOR man”, yet ideas came bubbling forth with his usual zest and enthusiasm. He stage-managed and successfully executed one of the largest manoeuvres held on the North German plain in the 1970s and 1980s — Exercise Spearpoint — attracting favourable comment in NATO circles and in the international press and media.

The relief from Whitehall proved short-lived, however; in 1981 he was brought back on promotion to general as Master-General of the Ordnance.

In this post and as a member of the Army Board he was obliged to face yet another Defence Review, initiated by the Conservative Government’s Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott. But the Falklands crisis blew up just in time to prevent the implementation of many of Nott’s proposals, and Leng undertook a substantive role in the feat of improvisation that enabled the Army to play its part in the victory achieved in the South Atlantic.

When he retired from the Army in 1983 he took over the chairmanship of the Racecourse Association, a position which absorbed all his very considerable drive and ingenuity until he finally retired in 1989 to his home, and much-loved garden, in Dorset.

His first marriage to Virginia Rosemary Pearson was dissolved in 1981, when he married Flavia Tower, daughter of General Sir Frederick (“Boy”) Browning and Lady Browning (Dame Daphne du Maurier, the novelist).

Leng is survived by his second wife and three sons and two daughters of his first marriage.

General Sir Peter Leng KCB MBE MC, Master-General of the Ordnance, 1981-83, was born on May 9, 1925. He died on February 11, 2009, aged 83

Courtesy The Times 18 Feb 09