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Colonel J P Fane
Late The Life Guards |
 Colonel Julian Fane, who has died aged 92, was Commanding Officer of The Life Guards from 1962 to 1964. In his earlier service in the Gloucestershire Regiment during the Second World War he was awarded two Military Crosses and the Croix de Guerre.
Julian Patrick Fane was the son of Colonel Cecil Fane of the 12th Lancers, and was born in London on 17th February 1921, and educated at Stowe. With the outbreak of war imminent, he completed the short course at Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Gloucestershire Regiment, and by April 1940 was serving with the 2nd Battalion in Belgium. The following month he was one of the few survivors of a desperate rearguard action to delay the German advance and enable the bulk of the British Army to escape from Dunkirk. The Glosters were ordered to hold the strategically important hilltop town of Cassel, north-west of Lille, to the last round and last man, an order he was surprised to receive so early in his service. They were surrounded by the enemy and fought off several assaults under aerial bombardment, artillery fire, and tank attacks. On 28th May they received a message to make a break for it and head for Dunkirk. Fane, leading 12 men, managed to slip away in the darkness. He was wounded in the arm by a mortar bomb as his small group scrambled through hedges and over ditches, guided by flashes of guns on the coast and the light from burning farmhouses. At 3am they hid up in a barn and grabbed some sleep. The Germans arrived during the day, and the farmer climbed up a ladder and whispered to them to stay concealed under the straw. The next night, Fane and his men crept past the enemy bicycle patrol which was fast sleep under a hedge beside a towpath. On 2nd June, after covering more than 20 miles of enemy-held country, he was standing in the doorway of a small terraced house close to the beach when a bomb fell nearby. The house collapsed and he was blown into the street. His party reached Dunkirk in time to be evacuated back to England. Fane received the first of his MCs for his initiative and courage for his part in the fighting withdrawal.
On his return to England, he joined the GHQ Liaison Regiment, known as Phantom, a forward reconnaissance unit that provided up-to-the-minute battlefield information directly back to senior commanders. He served with them on the Dieppe raid, in North Africa, and Sicily. In Tunisia, following the capture of Bizerte, which fell on 13th May 1943, he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in recognition of the skill demonstrated by his Phantom patrol. A parachuting accident in September 1943, in which he fractured three vertebrae and broke several bones in his foot, put him out of action and ended his service with Phantom. When he recovered sufficiently to walk properly, he attended the six-month wartime course at the Staff College, Camberley. He re-joined 2nd Glosters shortly after D-Day, serving as a company commander in the campaign in northwest Europe until the end of the war.
On 20th January 1945, Fane’s company was ordered to clear both sides of a street about 100 yards in length in the village of Zetten, near Nijmegen, Holland. The Germans had barricaded themselves in the houses and were well supplied with automatic weapons and bazookas. Fane moved between the two platoons he was commanding and, by his personal disregard for danger, encouraged his men to close with the enemy. Blazing away with his Sten gun, he led them in a determined assault that resulted in the street being cleared of opposition. His bravery and outstanding leadership was recognised by a Bar to his MC.
After the war he transferred to the 12th Lancers and served in Palestine and Malaya. In 1951, he was attached to the British Embassy in Cairo as the military attaché. As a fluent French speaker, he subsequently served as a liaison officer between the British and French during the Suez Crisis.
When the 12th Lancers merged with the 9th in 1960, Fane was seconded to The Life Guards and served as a senior major until he assumed command in 1962, taking the Regiment to Germany and Cyprus. He felt the need to bring on the officers, and demonstrated and encouraged improvement, exemplified by his design of a military concentration near Lake Constance in the French zone. Following a road move of some 450 miles, the Regiment and its various attachments split into two groups, establishing themselves alongside their French hosts, RHQ in a nearby barracks, and the sabre squadrons in a tented camp close to the lake. Their hosts proved hospitable, although the language barrier was a problem, particularly for the Quartermaster, Dennis Meakin, who was heard to say to the French Commanding Officer at the formal cocktail party for the hosts, while clutching a beer he had brought having no taste for wine, ‘It’s no use talking to me mate as I don’t parlez-vous’.
Julian Fane’s next appointment was as an SO1 in HQ London District before being promoted and seconded to the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He left the Army in 1968 and joined Samuel Montagu, the merchant bank, as director of personnel. At a time when the city was generally not good at managing its staff, he made an immediate impact. Messengers and doormen looked smarter, telephones were answered more quickly and junior managers learned how to manage. His impact was noted and, within a year, he was made a director. When the Midland Bank bought Samuel Montagu, he joined Orion Bank as a main board director.
He retired in 1984 and settled in Kintbury, Berkshire. He was a good shot and enjoyed his fishing. Julian Fane married first, in 1949, Lady Ann Mary Lowther, who predeceased him. He married secondly, in 1959, Diana Ewart Hill, who survives him with a son and a daughter from his first marriage and a son and a daughter from his second.
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