Brigadier Nicholas Ridley
Officer who took command of his battalion after his CO was killed in IRA bombings at Warrenpoint
BRIGADIER NICHOLAS RIDLEY, who has died aged 75, took command of his battalion in 1979 after it became caught up in the bombings at Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, the deadliest IRA attack on the British Army during the Troubles.
On August 27 1979, just hours after the Queen’s cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was killed by a bomb at Mullaghmore, Donegal Bay, the IRA ambushed a convoy of 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment at Narrow Water Castle, near Warrenpoint. The bomb was hidden in a lorry loaded with bales of straw and was detonated by remote control.
The commanding officer of 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Highlanders (1 QO HLDRS), Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair, arrived by helicopter as part of a rapid reaction unit. The IRA had concealed a second bomb in milk pails and he and his signaller were killed by the explosion.
The attacks had left 18 dead and many severely injured. Ridley, based at Crossmaglen, South Armagh, was ordered to the site to take over and subsequently became acting commanding officer of his battalion. His men were out for revenge but Ridley, showing leadership of the highest order, persuaded them to direct their outrage into the resolve required to defeat the terrorists.
His brigadier said afterwards that he had never seen a battalion react so defiantly, so correctly and with such self-discipline after the loss of their CO. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, made a highly-publicised visit to Crossmaglen and briefings by Ridley and the local brigade commander led to the establishment of a directorate of security for the Province under MI6.
Nicholas John Ridley, the son of an officer in the Central Indian Horse, was born on March 25 1941 at Quetta (now in Pakistan) where his father was at the Army Staff College. His mother was the daughter of the college commandant, General Christison. His grandfather, General Sir Philip Christison, was a distinguished corps commander in the Burma Campaign.
Nicholas was educated at Shrewsbury where he was a music scholar and an athlete. In 1962 he was commissioned from Sandhurst into 1QO HLDRS and, having joined D Company, served on operations in Brunei, Borneo and Sarawak during the Confrontation with Indonesia.
After a move to West Berlin as Intelligence Officer he was, on one occasion, captured in East Berlin and roughed up by the communist security services. In the summer of 1979, he accompanied D Company 1QO HLDRS to Crossmaglen, South Armagh, in the heart of “bandit country”. Shortly after his arrival, the IRA detonated a bomb just as a patrol was passing. Private Alan MacMillan was caught in the blast and killed.
A few days later, acting on intelligence from the Irish police, he ordered a helicopter-borne investigation of a cabin cruiser seen acting suspiciously in Lough Ross, on the border between the North and the Republic of Ireland. After an exchange of fire, one terrorist was injured but escaped. Two dived overboard in an attempt to get away but were captured and charged with MacMillan’s murder. The boat yielded a considerable amount of radio-controlled bomb equipment which proved of value to bomb disposal experts.
Later, his men suspected that there was a large radio-controlled bomb in a house on the edge of Crossmaglen village. It was a spot where patrols used to pass but no one knew where the bomber was concealed. Ridley set off in the dead of night, with a small body of soldiers for protection.
He clambered through the back gardens of the village carrying bombdetection equipment, knowing that the bomber might very well be watching him and could detonate the device at any moment. Based on what he learned from this patrol, he worked out that the bomber was in a disused house overlooking the village.
In a meticulously planned helicopter-borne operation, the terrorist was surrounded by patrols from two companies as well as from 2 Para. Ridley spotted the bomber trying to escape and directed his capture and that of his two accomplices. The device was not at first discovered but a 100-pound bomb was eventually found in a nearby house. At the end of the tour Ridley was awarded an operational MBE.
In January 1982, he took command of 1 QO HLDRS and, after the Falklands War, they became the first garrison battalion. His men restored order, services and cleanliness to Port Stanley and brought a semblance of normality to the islanders after the trauma of invasion. His period of command included an emergency tour in Northern Ireland and, in 1983, he was advanced to OBE.
After commanding 54 Infantry Brigade, his final posting was as deputy commandant at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. He then made a successful career in fundraising for the Florence Nightingale Trust and the Guy’s & St Thomas’s Hospital Appeal before retiring to Roxburghshire where he became a fundraiser for a number of local charities as well as the Highlanders’ Regimental Museum at Fort George, near Inverness.
Ridley had considerable presence, striking good looks and great charm. He championed regimental piping and also promoted the singing of Gaelic. When he sang, for the last time, his Regiment’s March of the Cameron Men as guest of honour at a regimental luncheon last year, he was accompanied by the same clarsach, or Celtic harp, which was on loan to the Regiment from his famous grandfather.
He married, in 1966, Isabel Susan (Sue) Spencer-Nairn. She predeceased him and he is survived by a daughter and a son, and by his close friend Rosemary Wolrige Gordon. Another daughter predeceased him.