|
Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Emson MC
Late Coldstream Guards
|
In the blistering heat of the South Arabian summer of 1967, 21-year-old Second Lieutenant Nick Emson, a platoon commander in 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, found himself in the eye of the storm that was the climax of the Aden insurgency. On 1st June, there was a general strike throughout the colony, in which both the communist-backed National Liberation Front and the rival Arab nationalist Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen sought to thwart Britain’s attempt to establish a pro-western independent Federation of South Arabia.
Emson’s company had set up rooftop observation posts (OPs) throughout Sheikh Othman, the most troublesome district of Aden port. Shortly after first light, all the OPs came under intense small-arms fire, in many cases at close quarters, the firefights continuing for some five hours. Emson’s machine gunner was fatally wounded, and soon afterwards, when the armoured cars of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards were unable to continue support, the company commander ordered him to extricate his platoon and move to another OP nearby.
Emson, a powerfully built 6ft 3in, carried his wounded machine gunner under fire to an armoured ambulance that had managed to get close, and then succeeded in redeploying without further casualties, continuing the fight well into the evening. His personal example and leadership, wrote his company commander, ‘was an inspiration to his men … his courage and coolness under fire were in the highest tradition’.
Three weeks later, Emson’s company was the standby force in Radfan Camp near the coast. Morale among the local security forces had plummeted, and that morning the Federal National Guard in nearby Champion Lines mutinied, firing on a lorry as it approached, killing eight men of the Royal Corps of Transport. ‘C’ Company of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment under 1 PARA’s command were ordered to secure the Champion Lines armoury and restore order. They too suffered several casualties.
Emson was ordered to take out a patrol to search for dead or wounded. He picked four men and set off in an armoured 3-tonner.
They quickly found two wounded, whom Emson himself carried to the vehicle, but as it set off again a burst of fire from Champion Lines punctured the radiator and front tyres, causing it to slew across the road, exposing it fully. The next burst entered through the driver’s hatch visor, wounding the driver and three others. Emson pulled the driver from his seat and managed to turn the vehicle out of the line of fire. A bullet had passed through his headset, but he made radio contact with Radfan Camp for help.
With fire continuing, returned by the one unwounded man, Emson managed to carry the rest some distance into cover before the disabled 3-tonner could be recovered. Throughout the prolonged action, and in the earlier one in Sheikh Othman, in the words of the recommendation for a gallantry award, ‘this young officer showed exceptional bravery and devotion to duty. His courage and quick action undoubtedly saved many men’s lives’. Emson was awarded the Military Cross.
Nicholas Embleton Emson was born at RAF West Raynham, Norfolk, in 1945, where his father, Group Captain Reginald Emson AFC, was the station commander. In 1967, the now Air Marshal Sir Reginald Emson, as inspector-general of the RAF, would officially receive the Lockheed C-130 Hercules into service, the aircraft from which his son would make many a descent by parachute, sometimes painfully.
Emson, the youngest of four, was educated at St Edward’s School, Oxford, where he rowed in the first eight. After leaving, while waiting to begin military training, he took up a labouring job on the construction of the new Victoria Line on the London Underground. Soon afterwards, he and several others were trapped when fire filled the tunnel under Green Park with smoke. Their position was perilous in the extreme, but he had a book with him (the title now forgotten), which he read aloud to keep up morale. They were rescued after several hours with the aid of breathing apparatus.
Although Emson had the academic qualifications for a regular commission via the 18-month course at Sandhurst, he chose instead the quicker route — five and a half months and a short-service commission via Mons Officer Cadet School at Aldershot. He was commissioned in the Parachute Regiment in September 1966. His feet being size 13, he was immediately nicknamed ‘Boots’.
On return to England after Aden’s independence in November 1967, he was granted a regular commission in the Coldstream Guards, and in 1969 began an in-service degree at Durham University. Handsome, dashing, with huge physical presence yet equally great modesty, Emson spent much time on the river and left with a ‘Boating Third’ in geography.
He also married Lesley ‘Lelly’ Raylor, whom he had met socially before Aden. Lelly died in 2022. Their four children survive him: Nicolas, who works in forestry; Alys, who works with bloodstock in Kentucky; James, a vet; and Isabelle, the Princess Royal’s cook.
After a spell as the 1st Coldstream’s mortar platoon commander, Emson became second-in-command of the Guards Independent Parachute Company, whose role, besides deployments in Northern Ireland, was reconnaissance and preparation of drop zones (‘pathfinders’).
During a period of parachute continuation training on Salisbury Plain he was badly injured and spent several months in hospital, the first of a number of parachuting accidents that gave him back and leg trouble in later life.
On one occasion, lying in considerable pain in a side room of the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, he became maddened by a retired Medical Corps brigadier in the room next door who constantly shouted for the nurses who, used to his demands, mostly ignored him. Eventually, in falsetto voice, Emson called ‘coming Brigadier’, which bought him a little peace.
He returned to his battalion in 1975 as a company commander, served on the operations staff of HQ Land Forces Cyprus and then attended the Staff College at Camberley. Here he became impatient with staff duties minutiae which. although occasionally a matter of life and death, could seem rarefied especially as the Cold War showed little sign of overheating. He decided to plough his own military furrow, seeking jobs outdoors, preferably where he could enjoy watching wildlife and shooting game.
While at the British Army Training Unit in Alberta, Canada, he was promoted to acting lieutenant colonel and told that the following year the rank would be made substantive. To the astonishment of the military secretary, he asked for the promotion to be deferred and to revert instead to the rank of major so that he could return for one last tour of duty with the Coldstream.
His subsequent promotion to commandant of the Military Corrective Training Centre, Colchester, was a masterstroke by the appointments board. Several soldiers undergoing purposeful punishment during his time there became RSMs, and some were even commissioned.
In 1992 Emson took up his last appointment in the army: commandant of Warcop training area in Cumbria. Besides his expertise in training, his love of country sports and country people was a huge asset in managing civil-military relations. Most unusually, he stayed for nine years, and then for several more after the job was civilianised. On retirement he ran the Earl of Strathmore’s grouse moor nearby, where he was known affectionately to all as ‘the Colonel’, though they little knew that as a newly commissioned subaltern he had, in the words of his own colonel, saved many men’s lives.
With Thanks to The Times |
|
