The Rt Hon The Earl George Jellicoe KBE DSO MC

[Rover]

Here`s a Quote from the Times
Quote


Earl Jellicoe
War hero who carried out attacks behind German lines in North Africa and then became Leader of the House of Lords
April 4, 1918 - February 22, 2007
By the age of 25 Lord Jellicoe had lived a life rich in adventure, of high drama and in great personal danger. In the Second World War he served in the Coldstream Guards, No 8 Commando, the SAS and SBS (Special Boat Service) and carried out guerrilla attacks on enemy-occupied territory and behind German lines in North Africa.
Later he rose to be Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal in Sir Edward Heath’s Government. Then in 1973 he resigned immediately after it became known that he had been involved with call girls. Heath wrote him a warm letter afterwards commending his decision and saying that “it accorded with the best traditions of British public life”. An inquiry held later found that there was no danger to security.
In 1986, some years after leaving government, he was asked to review the operation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. His report gave warning of “the increasing threat in Britain from international terrorism” and called for extended use of powers of arrest and detention.
In 1942, when in command of the SBS, he was landed with a force of British, French and Greek soldiers by submarine on enemy-occupied Crete. It was night with no moon and the men went ashore in small boats. Some 14 enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground, also aircraft engines and a number of military vehicles. The men were on Crete for 12 days before making a rendezvous on the other side of the island with the submarine HMS Porcupine. Only the Free French failed to make it. They were never seen again and were believed to have been betrayed and killed.
Another island raid had Heraklion airfield as its target. Jellicoe dressed like a Cretan peasant to get into aircraft hangars, where he laid charges that destroyed 16 aircraft. His exploits in 1942 and 1943, when Allied forces were making little or no headway on the ground, greatly cheered up the Army High Commands in Cairo and Jerusalem. At times they feared he was another man lost after he failed to return when expected. Then there would be sightings in one of the smarter restaurants in Cairo or Jerusalem and word would come in via the bush telegraph “George is back.”
For a time he operated out of Tobruk. The British garrison was cut off on the land side by German and Italian troops. Jellicoe and his men were landed from a warship. Ashore Jellicoe found a big building that nobody wanted. The windows were mostly blown out and also part of the roof had gone. Jellicoe called it Albergo Tobruk and he and his men made it their home for many months. In one raid more than 100 miles behind German lines, charges were laid and some 60 German aircraft blown up by remotely detonated charges.
In 1943 when General Sir Henry (Jumbo) Wilson, the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, wanted to contact the Governor of Rhodes after the armistice with Italy, he chose Jellicoe for the job. Rhodes at the time was a highly fortified German garrison. Jellicoe was parachuted in at night. He was told he would be half a mile from the governor’s palace but at first light he found he had been dropped miles away and it took him four days to reach his destination.
When the war ended he was 27, a lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream Guards, with his wartime service recognised with a DSO, MC, Légion d’honneur, the Croix de Guerre, the Greek War Cross and several mentions in dispatches.
George Patrick John Rush-worth Jellicoe was the only son of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe. A godson of King George V, he was a page at the Coronation of George VI. His father had commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in the First World War and became First Sea Lord and Governor and Commander-in-Chief, New Zealand.
He went to Winchester and to Trinity College Cambridge, as an exhibitioner, in 1935 the year he succeeded to the title.
After war service Jellicoe joined the Foreign Office where he was quickly recognised as a high-flyer. First Secretary jobs in Brussels and Washington followed in quick succession. Then he was posted to Baghdad as Deputy Secretary-General of the Baghdad Pact, the short-lived treaty organisation intended to be the equivalent in the Middle East of Nato.
Feeling that advance in his career had stalled because of his adventurous private life, Jellicoe left the Foreign Office in 1958. He wished to divorce his first wife, Patricia O’Kane, whom he had married in 1944, to marry Philippa Dunne. But his wife refused him a divorce until 1966, when he remarried.
He joined his mother’s family firm, the British & Commonwealth Line, then adding to its fleet of luxury liners providing a regular service from Southampton to South and East Africa.
Previously a crossbencher, he now joined the Tories in the House of Lords and told them that, if he could be useful at any time, he would be glad to help.
He was an immediate success in the Lords. Having arrived in politics seemingly without much ambition, he was soon promoted by three Prime Ministers, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath.
When Lord Carrington became Leader of the House of Lords in 1963, Jellicoe filled his old job as First Lord of the Admiralty, the last occupant of that post.
When the Wilson Government took office in 1964, Carrington became Leader of the Opposition in the Lords with Jellicoe as his deputy.
It was at this time that Jellicoe told a public meeting that Heath was not the greatest Leader of the Opposition that the country had ever known, but he had the potential to become a great peacetime Prime Minister. His indiscretion was overlooked and Heath, on becoming Prime Minister, made him Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Lords and Minister for the Civil Service. Carrington had moved on to be Secretary of State for Defence.
Jellicoe formed deep friendships with Carrington and Lord Shackleton, Labour Leader in the Lords. He and Shackleton used to stay in each other’s homes at weekends, which caused a raised eyebrow from some Tories. All three men were dedicated Europeans, though not in favour of a federal Europe. When Britain joined the European Community, one of the most polished speeches on the subject was that of Jellicoe in the Lords, probably his best ever.
As Minister for the Civil Service, Jellicoe confided to his friends that nothing would please him more than encouraging some of the best of the British Civil Service to work for the European Community in Brussels.
Heath chose Jellicoe to perform several powerful adhoc tasks. One was after the 1972 miners’ strike when he coordinated government departments that were trying to put the country back on its feet.
Yet the next year, at the age of only 55, he was out of office, brought down as the ricochet victim of the sex scandal that led to the resignation of Lord Lambton (obituary, January 2, 2007). By common consent — and there were those who blamed Heath for accepting his resignation — he was a loss to politics and the House of Lords.
After his resignation he became chairman of Tate & Lyle, 1978-83; of the Davy Corporation, 1985-90; a director of Sothebys, 1973-85; and chairman of the council of King’s College London, 1977-84. He was president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, 1980-83; of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 1979-82; of the Royal Geographical Society, 1993-96, and the British Heart Foundation, 1990-95. What gave him particular pleasure was being Chancellor of Southampton University, 1984-95, as his family had an association with the city that went back nearly 200 years.
He made his own particular impact. While chairman of the British Medical Research Council 1982-90, he offered to be a guinea pig for the Aids vaccines the council was developing.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990.
He was a fine skier, still skiing off the piste at the age of 80. In London he headed several Greek organisations and was awarded the Greek Order of Honour in 1962.
In 1996 he was unanimously elected president of the Special Air Services (the SAS) in successio to General Sir Peter de la Billiãre.
In 1999 he was one of the hereditary peers voted to stay on in the Lords and was the longest-serving member of the House.
He is survived by his wife, Philippa, his former wife, Patricia Lady Jellicoe, two sons and two daughters of his first marriage, a son and two daughters from his second, and by another son.
The 3rd Earl Jellicoe is his eldest son, Viscount Brocas, who is an engineer.
Earl Jellicoe, KBE, FRS, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, 1970-73, was born on April 4, 1918. He died on February 22, 2007, aged 88

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RIP

Rover

[harry hackedoff]

What an absolute Hero!
A life so rich!

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

And he was.
Rest in Peace your Lordship

[anglo-saxon]

"...and the sprig of acacia was that which bloomed at the head of his grave"

Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the presence of the Lord.

Farewell, by Brother.