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Colonel Euan Houstoun OBE MBE
Late Grenadier Guards
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Colonel Euan Houstoun, who has died aged 78, served with the Grenadier Guards and the Special Forces and commanded a squadron of 22 SAS Regiment behind enemy lines in the Falklands conflict.
In April 1982, in an unprovoked attack, Argentina seized the Falkland Islands, the British Dependencies in the South Atlantic. Within days, a Royal Navy Task Force was assembled and dispatched.
G Squadron, commanded by Houstoun, regularly trained in Norway in the winter months and they were cold-weather, Arctic mountain experts, - so they were a natural choice for operations in the Falkland Islands. As the Task Force got within range, their reconnaissance teams were inserted by helicopter.
The role of G Squadron was to provide critical intelligence on which the land battle was based. The Squadron was tasked with surveillance and reporting enemy locations, strengths, activities and capabilities. Houstoun’s men, carrying packs, equipment and weapons weighing some 120lbs, had to cross rugged terrain providing little or no natural cover, in darkness, without knowing where enemy forces were deployed or where minefields had been sited.
A poncho and chicken wire camouflage afforded poor protection against the bitter cold and driving rain for men lying in shallow scrapes in the rocky ground. Communications were difficult. Radio operators would move out of their OP and march for an hour before transmitting in order to avoid giving away their position to direction finders.
Patrols could be in the field for as long as 28 days, in a hostile environment, with their skill and stealth the only protection against relentless ground and air search and the knowledge that if they were compromised, the chances of being extracted were remote.
Euan Houstoun was an outstanding commander. A natural leader, he was at his best in the field and his briefings given verbally and forcefully were a model of clarity and concision. His patrols suffered no losses and their reports led to naval gunfire, air and artillery strikes which caused significant attrition to the enemy.
Intrepid, an amphibious assault ship, became the launch pad for operations but, on May 19, a Sea King helicopter ditched on its approach in darkness. All but nine of the thirty men were killed. Lieutenant-Colonel (later General Sir) Michael Rose, the commander of 22 SAS Regiment, gathered the survivors of his two squadrons below deck on Intrepid. He told them that it was not the moment to grieve. The conflict was at a critical juncture. Despite the losses, the pace of operations continued unabated. On June 14, Major-General Mario Menendez surrendered all the Argentine Forces in East and West Falklands.
Euan Henry Houstoun was born at home at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 2nd January 1946. His father, Lindsay, served in the Fleet Air Arm in the Second World War and flew a Swordfish from Victorious in the search for the battleship Bismarck. He was subsequently attached to the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, which was torpedoed near Gibraltar in 1941.
Young Euan was educated at Bradfield College before going on to Mons OCTU. He went into the Grenadier Guards on a three-year Short Service Commission and joined the 1st Battalion in Wuppertal, BAOR, in 1964.
A fine athlete, on a six-month tour in Cyprus, competing in the high hurdles, he broke the Near-East Land Forces record. On returning to England, he took part in ceremonial duties and, one evening, as Officer of the Guard, he was allowed to invite a few guests to the Tower of London for drinks.
It was a particularly good party. After a couple of hours, he sent his guests home and decided to have a short nap before attending the Ceremony of the Keys. This was part of the traditional ritual of locking up the Tower for the night and due to take place at 2200.
He slept right through it. The following morning, he was summoned by the Governor of the Tower who was apoplectic. ‘Did he not realise that he was the first officer in 359 years to miss the ceremony?’ Threatened with open arrest and ordered to report to his Commanding Officer immediately on return to barracks, he had to carry out extra duties for several months.
Before traffic in London made it impossible, the Picquet guarding the Bank of England marched from Wellington Barracks to the Bank in full ceremonial dress and the officer in charge was allowed to invite one male guest to dinner. After an excellent meal, Houstoun and his guest, both mildly inebriated, decide to explore. They got lost in the labyrinthine vaults and passages and had to be rescued by the platoon sergeant.
He liked to tell the story of the occasion when a brother officer invited an attractive girlfriend to dinner there. She came dressed as a monk, enveloped in a cloak and hood, but she had to be introduced to the bank official who remained on duty throughout the night. The officer explained that his companion belonged to a religious Order and had taken a strict vow of silence. The young woman escaped detection.
Houstoun accompanied the 1st Bn to Sharjah, UAE, on a nine-month tour. He learned to fly a glider and volunteered to become Forward Air Controller, the man on the ground who controls the routes of jets and directs them precisely on to their target. In early 1969, on the way back to England, he took a month’s leave in Cyprus and, based at Dhekelia, learned free-fall parachuting.
He was always on the look-out for a new adventure, the riskier the better, and the challenge of trying to get selected by the SAS became irresistible. He already knew the Brecon Beacons and, having booked into a farm near Monmouth, he spent 10 days in the Black Mountains on compass bearings, day and night, practising reconnaissance and infiltration, choosing complicated targets and difficult terrain.
Candidates were billeted in the SAS camp at Hereford. The Selection process tested combat survival, resistance to interrogation, physical stress, endurance, orienteering, communications, weapon and medical skills. It included a long night swim across the River Wye, marches averaging 25 miles a day in the mountains in full kit and three ascents in a single day to the highest Beacon, a climb of 500-800 feet each time.
Houstoun passed into 22 SAS and was posted to G Squadron. He commanded 24 (Air Assault) Troop and he was soon selected for a job training President Jomo Kenyatta’s bodyguard. He and his team set up camp between Nairobi and Mombasa where they were joined by members of Kenyatta’s tribe for an intensive eight-week course.
It was in Nairobi that he met Joanna, the young woman who was to become his wife. She was working for the African Free Trade Coffee Association. Her father commanded the Kenyan Air Force.
After nine months on counter-insurgency operations with the SAS, commanding a group of British, Arab and Baluch soldiers in the southern Dhofar region of Oman, Houstoun rejoined the Grenadier Guards in Germany. The 1st Battalion was preparing for a four-month tour in Londonderry and the Creggan and Houstoun served as second in command of a company.
A staff appointment as GSO 3 (Ops) based at 22 SAS’s Duke of York’s HQ, Chelsea, followed. In the procession proceeding the large state funeral for Lord Louis Mountbatten, he was given the job of leading an elderly group of sailors who had served under the great man in the destroyer, Kelly, in the Second World War.
The rehearsal for the march from Wellington Barracks to Westminster Abbey began at 0300. Led by the sound of carousing and the clink of glasses, he succeeded in assembling a motley collection of former chief petty officers, ratings and stokers, about 20 in number, and surrounded by almost as many empty whisky bottles. Fortunately, they took a circuitous route by way of Admiralty Arch and Whitehall, which gave them a chance to sober up.
In 1979, he was granted a Regular Commission and returned to Hereford to assume command of G (Guards) Squadron 22 SAS. At the conclusion of a challenging tour in East Tyrone, Northern Ireland, he was awarded an MBE (Military) for gallantry. The medal ribbon was pinned on by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
In 1980, counter-terrorism took centre stage. The Iranian Embassy in London was held by insurgents but it was B Squadron who had the task of raising the siege.
In the Sea King helicopter crash in May 1982, during the Falklands conflict, eight soldiers from G Squadron were killed. Six of them were married. Houstoun’s wife, Joanna, was awakened at six o’clock in the morning and was asked to go to the office of the Families Officer. She feared the worst for her husband. She was expecting her third child and, half way to the office, she stopped the car, knelt down on the grass verge and prayed to God to give her strength.
The wives of the soldiers had to live with the fear of their husbands being thrown into danger. Many of them had been young when they married and their husbands had gone away on four-to-six-month tours leaving them to cope with whatever problems arose at home. Often they had to rely on hastily written scraps of airmail paper which usually arrived erratically or too late to help with decision-making.
The Families Officer told her that Euan was not among the casualties but when the bereaved wives saw the two together at their door, they knew that their worst fears had been realised. The wives of G Squadron, however, were a close-knit family. They shared the grief, and the outpouring of love and care sustained them through the hardest of times.
After two years with the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanised) of the US Army at Fort Carson, Colorado, Houstoun commanded a company of the 1st Battalion in Northern Ireland. In 1988, he assumed command of the 1st Bn Grenadier Guards at Munster, BAOR, shortly after the introduction of the new Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
This was followed by two three-year tours, first at Catterick, Yorkshire, in command of the Battlegroup Trainer (North) and then, on promotion to full colonel, as Commandant of the Combined Arms Training Centre, Warminster. With no prospects of further promotion, he joined the FCO as the Defence Attaché in Israel.
In 2001, he retired from the Army and ran crisis management training for civil servants before setting up a narrowboat cruise company with his wife. He was president of the Grenadier Guards Association for 10 years and, in 2013, he became president of the HMS Trincomalee Trust, a charity that maintains the Trincomalee, a restored frigate, launched in 1817 and on display at Hartlepool.
Colonel Euan Houstoun died on 10th November 2024. He married, in 1972, Joanna Rothwell who was an unceasing support to him throughout their married life and who survives him with their son and two daughters.
With thanks to The Daily Telegraph and Alan Ogden, formerly Grenadier Guards |
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