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Lieutenant General Sir Christopher Drewry KCB CBE
Late Welsh Guards
by Paul de Zulueta
formerly Welsh Guards
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‘I am quite certain we have picked a winner’, remarked a senior Welsh Guards officer when Christopher Drewry was commissioned in 1969. It was a far-sighted judgement. Christopher was the outstanding staff officer of his generation and the first Household Division officer to command the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). When he resigned from the Army in 2003, many of his peer group were appalled that the Army should lose one of its finest minds combined with proven operational experience. But merit and sheer intellect alone do not weigh heavily in the highest reaches of the Army and the MOD. More politically minded officers often find favour over those whose ability speaks for itself but feel no need to press forward their claims.
Christopher Drewry’s early life was formative in his character and temperament. His father, born in 1889, was 58 when Christopher was born in 1947. He had fought at Gallipoli and on the Western Front before becoming the Duke of Devonshire’s land agent for the Peak District. He had a son and a daughter with his first wife, a half-brother and half-sister to Christopher. The half-brother was killed in the Second World War; the half-sister died in 1953 and Christopher’s father a year later in 1954. Christopher was brought up by his mother, his father’s second wife who died when he was 23 and his nanny, Emily, to whom he was devoted and who remained with the family for 60 years. He bore these setbacks with equanimity which stood him in good stead as he learnt to be self-reliant, observant and apply himself to any challenge in a calm and incisive manner.
After Malvern College, Christopher read French and German at Oxford, languages which he did not neglect after Oxford and which repaid him with interest in his later career, commanding the Battalion and later the ARRC, both in Germany. When he joined the Battalion in Pirbright in 1969, his company commander had the foresight to send him on a three-month course for Guardsmen training to be corporals. Christopher attached great value to this experience. He later remarked that it was not so much the basics of soldiering that he acquired but the insight it gave him into the Guardsmen’s lives, what was important to them, what they expected from their leaders, and that training should always have a clear purpose.
Christopher’s early promise was more than justified in his appointment as Battalion intelligence officer in South Armagh in the winter of 1973-1974. He was awarded a Commendation for exceptional service. The final sentence in the citation read: ‘His written intelligence summaries and verbal briefings were outstanding, not only due to his natural ability but also to his industry and attention to detail. His course reports at the time, including the Junior Division Staff College, ended with what became a familiar phrase: ‘unquestionably the best officer on the course’.
Few officers get to the top without observing and learning from others. Mostly on how to do things well, and a few on how not to do things. Christopher served as ADC to the Major General, Philip Ward, a Welsh Guardsman, who was no warrior but combined the highest of standards with an abiding concern for those under his command; he took great care over the fabric of an institution. In 1976, Christopher married Miranda Worrall, youngest daughter of a Coldstreamer, Colonel Claude Worrall. Her elder sisters, Kate and Sue, had already married Welsh Guards officers, Charles Guthrie (later Field Marshal Lord Guthrie) and Colonel David Lewis. The Worralls are a close knit and outgoing clan and Christopher’s marriage to Miranda, blessed with a son and two daughters, did much to soften his taciturn nature. Many who served under Christopher with admiration would speak of Miranda in the same vein. They were a formidable team.
Christopher was appointed Adjutant in late 1976 just as the Battalion was to begin a memorable tour of Berlin. It was the height of the Cold War. Berlin, surrounded by the Warsaw Pact’s Third Shock Army had a bite to it both militarily and socially. Peter Williams commanded the Battalion at the tour’s outset and was succeeded by Charles Guthrie, Christopher’s brother-in-law. Well led, well administered and highly motivated, the Battalion’s reputation was unrivalled. Christopher’s only headache was to keep a lid on the young officers’ libido. He was to award 112 extra picquets, a Regimental if not a Household Division record, when four young officers, including this obituarist, returning in the small hours from the 1001 Club in the French Sector, decided to absent themselves from a ‘crash out’, a Brigade test exercise of the Battalion’s readiness to deploy.
Christopher’s growing reputation as a brilliant staff officer was confirmed when he was awarded a rare A grade at the Staff College. Even his brightest contemporaries spoke of him with a mixture of envy and admiration. His unerring ability to draft the most complex of military papers, changing neither a word nor a comma, earned him the sobriquet ‘One Draft Drewry’. But it was his performance as Chief of Staff of 6th Field Force (1980-1982), that prompted the Army’s high command to sit up and note that the future of the Army would be in good hands with officers of Christopher’s calibre.
Christopher’s leadership in command appointments was as inspirational as his staff work was sublime. But it was a leadership style born not just out of the mastery of his profession. He commanded No 2 Company during the Falklands campaign in 1982. After our victory in the campaign, Christopher’s company was tasked with the repatriation of the Argentine prisoners of war. It was a potentially fraught assignment requiring tact, attention to detail and humanity. No 2 Company conducted the operation flawlessly. After the campaign, his platoon commanders and non-commissioned officers spoke of him as one: ‘He always placed the well-being of the Guardsmen first, everyone felt valued and supported even in the most challenging times. Calm and measured, we had complete faith and confidence in his leadership.’
Christopher’s most enduring legacy to the Regiment was his period in command of the Battalion in Hohne, BAOR, and Northern Ireland. The trauma of the loss of 33 Welsh Guardsmen on the Sir Galahad, during the Falklands War, with a further three during the campaign, had a profound effect. The Welsh Guardsmen had lost their hywl. Christopher’s arrival as Commanding Officer in spring 1985 led to a marked uplift in morale, a shared purpose and a return to its old esprit de corps. As a senior non-commissioned officer (later commissioned) was to remark at the time, ‘It wasn’t just his ability to think and plan ahead, his tactical nous when he commanded the Battalion from a tank in a big exercise in Canada, it was his humanity and guidance to those who served with him. He inspired a generation of Welsh Guardsmen’.
After a couple of years in the prestigious and plum job as Colonel Army Plans in the MOD, Christopher was given command of 24 Airmobile Brigade in December 1990. It coincided with the restructuring of the brigade as part of the multinational airborne division. One of his staff officers at the time remembers Christopher drafting a letter in perfect German to the German commander of the division after tearing up an MOD recommended draft riddled with poor grammar and spelling. If he saw his staff were too busy, he would often pitch in to help, cutting to the heart of the issue with a single draft in his perfect hand. Two members of his staff went on to two star and above rank. They had learnt from a man who led by example and who had inspired them to master their profession.
Christopher’s upward trajectory was by now assured. He returned to the MOD as Director of Army Plans and assumed the appointment of GOC UK Support Command in Rheindahlen in late 1995. He was made Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff for Policy in 1997. The incoming Labour Secretary of State for Defence was George Robertson, a man whom Christopher greatly admired for his decisiveness. In the 2000 Birthday Honours he was awarded his KCB. Characteristically, he remarked at the time that although he was proud of the award, he saw it very much as a shared accomplishment with Miranda.
In 1999, he succeeded Mike Jackson (later General Sir Mike Jackson and Chief of the General Staff) as Commander ARRC. Christopher’s chief of staff was David Richards (later General Lord Richards) who went on to become Chief of the Defence Staff. Richards in his autobiography wrote: ‘We were a happy team, and I learnt a lot, there wasn’t anything I would not do for Christopher. My wife felt the same about Christopher’s hard-working and compassionate wife Miranda’.
A Welsh Guards ADC spoke of his time with Christopher at the ARRC with great affection: ‘His great skill was in drawing in those disparate elements from the ten divisions which made up the ARRC, UK, USA, Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Belgium, etc and making them into an effective whole. His calm presence, giving equal airtime to each national deputation regardless of size and contribution, was greatly admired. Even when he was stranded in deep snow atop a Turkish mountain for eight hours, he remained his serene self, a quiet acceptance of the vagaries of a commander’s day visiting his troops in the field’.
After his time in command of the ARRC, Christopher was offered the job as Adjutant General which had been downgraded to three star. After thirty-four years of service to Crown and Country, he decided to resign. He could look back on his time with quiet pride, knowing that he had made a considerable difference to those who had been privileged to serve with him.
‘Never look back’, he was heard to say, a remark to which he kept his word. The obituary photograph tells its own story. He had drawn much comfort from his childhood in Derbyshire and he was determined to return to his farm and enjoy the consolations of the countryside with his family. He wrote an acclaimed history of Wormhill and became a highly competent gardener taking great pleasure in producing vegetables for his home and the local village shop.
There was a sense of disquiet over his reluctance to leave Derbyshire. But he was a private man and wholly at ease with himself and his life at Wormhill. If he knew the affection and respect in which he was held, and the wish by many to see more of him, he may have ventured forth more often from the Derbyshire High Peaks. Christopher was buried at St Margaret’s Church, Wormhill where his parents are buried, his two daughters married, and where he was christened.
His platoon commanders from the Falklands campaign, travelling from far and wide, battled through the blizzards of Storm Bert to attend the funeral. Christopher would have smiled at that. |
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