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Sir John Gorman MC
Late Irish Guards
by Captain J C Gorman GM
formerly Irish Guards and The Life Guards
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 John Reginald Gorman was born at Mullaghmore in Co Tyrone, the elder son of the district inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The family was Catholic. His father had served with distinction in the British Army during the First World War, winning the Military Cross and considered his affinity lay with Britain. Gorman was sent to the Imperial Service College, Windsor.
Gorman joined the Irish Guards in 1943. His first serious challenge was as a subaltern during the early stages of the Normandy invasion. On the morning of 18th July 1944, the Guards Armoured Division headed south towards Cagny, Gorman’s tank was bogged down at a stream crossing and on cresting a ridge in haste to catch up, he saw four German tanks in a field 200 yards away. The largest was a ‘King Tiger’ - the first to be reported in Normandy - mounting the formidable 88 mm gun which began turning in Gorman’s direction. The Tiger could be outgunned only by the Soviet ‘Stalin’ tanks on the Eastern front. After the shell from Gorman’s 75 mm bounced off its armour, his order to fire again was met by a despairing cry from his gunner ‘Gun’s jammed, sir’ Gorman ordered, ‘Driver, ram’. It was slightly downhill and there was only a scraggy hedge in the way, so the driver let the Sherman down the slope at 40 mph and hit the King Tiger aft of the gun. The German commander’s head, Gorman recalled ‘emerged from the turret - he must have been totally bemused by what was happening to his impregnable monster’.
The German crew scrambled out with their hands up, but the guns of the other three enemy tanks set the following Irish Guards’ Sherman ablaze. Unable to extract his tank from the collision, Gorman ordered his crew into a handy ditch - the front gunner mistakenly took refuge with the German crew, making a hasty exit with a salute. Gorman then raced to commandeer a spare British ‘Firefly’ tank mounting a 17-pounder gun to deal with the remaining Germans.
He was awarded the Military Cross and his tank driver, LCpl James Baron (obituary, The Guards Magazine, Winter 2002/03 Edition) was awarded the Military Medal. Both men received their awards from General Montgomery in the field. (Gorman was also awarded the Croix de Guerre, but only in 2007!)
During the liberation of Brussels, he learnt that the Germans had requisitioned an enormous supply of champagne from Piper Heidsieck in France and had hidden it in the city’s railway arches. At liberty to fill up a truck, he and his crew were later forced to brew up tea with champagne having jettisoned water supplies. Piper Heidsieck remained his lifelong favourite champagne and the company sent six cases to his wake (held at Wellington Barracks in September 2014).
On leaving the Army in 1945, he followed his father into the RUC via a ‘fast track’ system leading to early appointment as District Inspector for North Antrim. His job was to train and lead 100 policemen in carrying out the enforcement of the law; he encountered a young preacher, Ian Paisley, whose protests he policed. The IRA threat in the 1950s was apparent but not yet a serious problem.
In 1960, Gorman was invited to join BOAC as chief of security. This was not just a significant challenge but also a decidedly risky career change. Even so, he took the job and over the next few years radically overhauled BOAC’s security. Terrorism then was less of a threat than the various smuggling rackets into which air and ground staff could be drawn. He handled a host of personnel changes with such deftness that, after only a few years, he was asked to become head of personnel. Before then, however, he had to take responsibility for the Queen’s visit to India in 1961, after which he was appointed CVO, and later to Australia.
He was appointed CBE in 1974. He was regional manager for British Airways Canada 1969-75 and of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka 1975-79. Retirement at 56 held no appeal and when offered the appointment of vice-chairman and chief executive of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive he accepted with alacrity and responsibility for 200,000 properties occupied his enthusiastic attention.
He entered politics as chairman of the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue at the invitation of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, in 1996. It was a formidable challenge. He left with a knighthood in 1998 when he was elected Ulster Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for North Down, a rare and prominent Catholic advocate of unionism. He served as Deputy Speaker from 1999 until 2002.
He married, in 1948, Heather Caruth of Ballymena, who had served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. They had four children: Angela, who became a school teacher and now lives in South Africa; Johnny, who followed his father into the Irish Guards and was awarded the George Medal in Hong Kong; Rosanagh, a marketing executive; and Justin, a tree surgeon, who predeceased his father. His grandson, James Erasmus, also served with the Micks.
John Gorman did everything with gusto: beekeeping, singing, amateur dramatics (he received rave reviews on stage in Armagh), and skiing in Canada. He was a Knight of Malta and regularly went to the Lourdes pilgrimage. A keen fisherman, he once caught an 18 lb salmon on a fishing expedition to Scotland for his 75th birthday. On being refused space for it in his wife’s freezer, he offered it to the hotel in exchange for the night’s bar bill. But also staying in the hotel were his son Johnny, his close friend Tony (Dipper) Dorman (a wartime Mick) and his son Richard Dorman (also a Mick). The hotel is no longer in business!
He was a keen attendee at Mick dinners in Belfast, Liverpool and London and rarely missed a St Patrick’s Day. His memoirs were published in 2002.
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