General Sir Peter Whiteley GCB OBE Royal Marines

GENERAL SIR PETER WHITELEY

  Peter Whitely was the first Royal Marines officer to be appointed as a Nato Commander-in-Chief and the first for over a hundred years to be appointed GCB.   Divided by the Baltic sea, with Norway having a particularly low population density and the military picture complicated by Swedish neutrality, Nato’s ‘northern flank’ was always an area of strategic concern.  Nato’s war plans envisaged rapid reinforcement in order to confront Soviet penetration through Norway in a region characterised by difficult terrain and harsh climactic conditions.  By 1972 UK’s withdrawal from defence obligations in the Far East and concentration upon Nato had prompted the Royal Marines to specialise in arctic warfare in addition to their traditional amphibious warfare expertise. For this reason, General Sir Walter Walker, CinC Allied Forces Northern Europe, who had served with Whiteley in Borneo, asked for a Royal Marines Major-General as his chief of staff, with an eye on Whiteley for the post. 

               He was an outstanding success in this appointment, bringing much professional experience to the task and establishing trust and confidence amongst his Norwegian, Danish and German colleagues and their leaders, recognising clearly that in a voluntary alliance a balance needs to be struck between persuasion and direction.  He heard later that those countries had asked for him to be earmarked as a future CinC.

               Promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1975, he became the Commandant General, the senior Royal Marines post and during which duty he was appointed KCB.  Upon the death in office of General Sir John Sharp, Whiteley was a popular choice to replace him at very short notice as CinC Allied Forces Northern Europe. 

               As CinC, Whiteley was politically sure-footed and imbued a sense of purpose to a command which, compared with the heavy investment in mechanised warfare on the central German plain and the challenging maritime complexities of the Mediterranean littoral, was often seen as the Cinderella of the Nato command structure. He remarked that Nato fortunately worked fairly slowly so he found himself carrying on where he had left off as Chief of Staff, successfully achieving his aims to get Scandinavian countries to accept German forces on their soil and to obtain a good liaison with the French who were never part of the Nato integrated military structure.

               Educated at Bishop’s Stortford College and the Ecole des Roches, Peter Whiteley was usefully bi-lingual in French and had won a scholarship to London University but having tried for the RAF, forwent his scholarship for a commission in the Royal Marines, going to sea at the end of 1941 and serving in the battleship Resolution and battlecruiser Renown.  While in the cruiser Gambia, he controlled the brief bombardment that heralded the surrender of Vichy French forces in Madagascar and later in the Pacific suggested the use of the main gun armament as a barrage against Japanese kamikaze aircraft, an effective if unconventional measure. He was awarded his bridge watchkeeping certificate, rare for a Royal Marine, in Tokyo Bay on the day of the Japanese surrender.        

               In 1946 he achieved his aim to fly by qualifying as a naval fighter pilot, flying Seafires and Sea Furies, also learning to fly helicopters and earning his parachutists’ wings.

               From 1951 to 1953 he rose to adjutant of 40 Commando in Malaya during the protracted and eventually successful military and civil campaign to free the country of a destructive Chinese communist influence.

               Returning to the MoD, Whiteley was given the task of re-designing the Commando Brigade which was then oriented towards WW2 raiding tasks and lacked the supporting arms and logistic support needed for protracted operations.  His proposals were along the lines of a modern infantry battalion with extras at brigade level and he was immensely delighted to have his ideas accepted, ‘probably my most lasting achievement’. 

               His intellectual ability as a staff officer was first noticed when Brigade Major of 3 Commando Brigade, earning him a prestigious appointment on the directing staff of the army staff college at Camberley.  He was appointed OBE in 1960.

               He commanded  42 Commando during the operations on behalf of the newly formed Malaysian Federation in Sabah and Sarawak, fighting against President Sukarno of Indonesia’s disruptive insurgents, a campaign which showed again that British troops were as good at jungle warfare as any.  Whiteley brought an original motif to the important ‘hearts and minds’ activities that were so successful in Malaya. He had acquired a Malaysian honey bear from one of his marines who had bought the orphan from a trapper, training it to behave like a dog, sitting and walking to heel. Armed only with a walking stick and the bear on a lead, he would enter a village and sit at a table at the inevitable coffee shop until curiosity, led by children, brought out the inhabitants to investigate.  Over coffee friendships were formed, intelligence would flow, the bear receiving a can of Tiger beer.  Quick-minded and decisive as acting Brigade Commander in Sarawak he was mention4ed in despatches for repelling, in almost divisional strength, Indonesia’s last effort, known as the Tebedu Incursion.

               On return to UK, Whiteley worked for the Commandant General in the MoD, attended the Nato defence college in Rome, where he learnt Italian, then in 1968 was promoted to brigadier and command of 3 Commando Brigade.  Swift promotion to Major General saw him in charge of all commando forces, leading to his Nato appointment.

               On his retirement in 1979 he was appointed GCB.  He became the Lieutenant Governor of Jersey until 1984, an island that both he and his wife knew extremely well.  Royal visitors included King Olav and Crown Prince Harald of Norway with whom the Whiteleys had formed warm friendships.

               He was made Deputy Lieutenant of Devon in 1987 and was a governor of Bembridge School, Kelly College and St Michael’s School, Tavistock.  Amongst several other activities he was Master of the Guild of Freemen of the City of London in 1987 and vice chairman of the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, a trustee of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust and county president of St John’s Ambulance..

               Peter Whiteley was a keen sailor and with a love of music, ballet and opera.  Colleagues remember a relaxed and self-confident man, always with plenty of spare capacity for what might come his way and an attractive, consultative leadership style.

               He is survived by his wife Nancy whom he married in 1948 and their two sons and two daughters.

General Sir Peter Whiteley GCB OBE, CinC

Allied Forces Northern Europe 1977-79, was born

on December 13, 1920.  He died on 2^nd February 2016  aged 95