John Graham (British Army officer, born 1923)

Early career

Educated at Cheltenham College 1936–1940, he first served with the Isle of Wight Home Guard, before enlisting into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in August 1941. In 1942, he was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of that regiment, serving with them in North West Europe, where he received a mention in despatches. Following the war, he served in Palestine with the 1st Battalion.

In late 1948 he was sent to London to learn Czech prior to working in the British Embassy in Prague 1949-1950. There he clandestinely assessed the Czech Armed Forces activities, including the building of airfields, barracks and the adaptation of the Czech-gauge railway lines to take Russian rolling stock, all at a time of great tension, when a Soviet attack on war-exhausted western Europe was thought by many to be inevitable and imminent.

Later he worked in the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in London. He transferred to The Parachute Regiment where was appointed Second-in-Command of the 2nd Battalion and later Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion (1964–1967).

Oman

Promoted to Brigadier, he attended an army languages course to learn Arabic before he assumed command of the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF), in Oman, in 1970, where the country was in a state of insurrection.

Sultan Said bin Taimur, the Omani absolute ruler, had outlawed almost all aspects of twentieth-century development and relied on British support to maintain the rudimentary functions of the state. In 1962 a dissatisfied tribal leader, Mussalim bin Nafl, formed the Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF) and obtained arms and vehicles from Saudi Arabia, and the country had been in a state of rebellion ever since.

Other insurgents in the north of Oman formed another organisation, the National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf (NDFLOAG). In June 1970 they attacked two SAF posts at Nizwa and Izki. They were repulsed but the incident convinced many (including the Sultan's British advisers and backers) that new leadership was required.

On 23 July 1970, Said bin Taimur was deposed. The coup d'état succeeded because the Omani army's chief intelligence officer in the Dhofar, Brigadier John Graham, and Colonel Hugh Oldman, military (later defence) secretary and supreme commander of the army in Muscat, insisted that Saeed surrender. When Qaboos confronted his father, accompanied by Graham, shots were fired. The Sultan was flown out of Oman by the RAF to Bahrain and then to London. Officially, the architect of the coup was the Sultan's son, but British civil servants and military were undoubtably involved.

On the morning after the Coup, it was Graham who took the minutes of the meeting of Sultan Qaboos' advisory cabinet. For his service, Graham received the Order of Oman in 1972.

Career, continued

In 1976 he was appointed General Officer Commanding (GOC) Wales as a Major General.

As well as serving in France and Germany, his military career took him to Palestine, Cyprus, British Guiana (now Guyana), Bahrain, Oman, Aden, India, the Netherlands and briefly in the Congo. He died on Friday 14 December 2012 in Barbados, West Indies. He retired in April 1978.

In retirement

On retiring from the army in April 1978. he became Secretary to the Administrative Trustees of the Chevening Estate; Chairman of the St John Council for Kent of the St John’s Ambulance; Honorary Colonel of the Kent Army Cadet Force and of the 203 (Welsh) General Hospital RAMC, as well as assisting the Staff of The Parachute Regiment at the Regimental HQ, Aldershot, before his retirement to Barbados in 1991.

In 1992 he was made a freeman of the City of London.

Family

He was the son of the late Colonel J A Graham, and Constance Mary Carew-Hunt.

He married Rosemary Elaine Adamson and had two children, Jacqueline (‘Pinky’), b September 1957, and Christopher, b July 1959.

In 1991, he retired to Barbados, West Indies, where he died in 2012.