RIP - Major-General Peter Chiswell, CB, CBE Ex Governor

In August 1971, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Chiswell, commanding 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment (3 Para), wrote a letter of condolence to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, one of whose priests, Father Hugh Mullan, had been shot and killed by a soldier of 2 Para who had reportedly mistaken him for a gunman.

The situation in 1971 was confused and volatile. A policy of internment without trial, intended to take out the IRA leadership and principal operators, had been introduced by Brian Faulkner, the prime minister of Northern Ireland, although the army had been distinctly lukewarm about it. The idea was that with the IRA’s leaders locked away the “men of goodwill” — not least the Catholic clergy — might have a chance to take a lead in the nationalist community. However, the strategy depended on the right men being arrested, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s (RUC) intelligence was patchy and faulty, much of it taken from unreliable informers. The net was cast wide and caught some innocent or at least low grade, people, provoking a furious backlash.

On August 9 soldiers moved into the area around Springfield Park as part of the detention operation, and rival nationalist and unionist crowds began to gather. In the confrontation, soldiers opened fire. Mullan was shot after he tried to administer the last rites to a wounded man lying on the ground.

3 Para had been responsible for the area for several months until handing over to 2 Para in June. They had had a tough time, Chiswell’s radio operator, Sergeant Michael Willetts, being killed by a bomb while trying to evacuate civilians, for which he received the George Cross. Chiswell himself received the OBE (Military), an honour not routinely bestowed for an emergency tour and one which reflected well on the battalion.

In the letter to the bishop Chiswell wrote of his “deep sense of sorrow and loss” and expressed “the sympathies of every officer and parachute soldier” in 3 Para. In their time on peacekeeping duties in Ballymurphy, they had, he continued, “found in him [Mullan] a priest to whom we could go for help, advice, guidance and encouragement”. A “bond of friendship” had been formed with “those officers and Senior NCOs who had daily contact with him” and who witnessed his “Christian courage” in his work and ministry.

The letter came to light during the inquest opened in 2019, one of the series of “legacy inquests” recommended by Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, covering 56 cases related to the Troubles. The letter had been private and there was nothing for Chiswell to gain by writing it. Indeed, there could have been loss.

However, it fortified the bishop, Dr William Philbin, who had been under pressure from some of his priests who wanted more action in defence of the nationalists’ civil rights, arguing that his inaction conceded leadership to the IRA, whom Philbin believed were “of the devil”. The letter helped to strengthen his resolve to distance his clergy from “the men of violence”.

The recommendation for Chiswell’s award cited his courage, calmness and impartiality “under the glare of national press and television”. Ten years later, the situation no less complex, he would return to the province as commander land forces, in the rank of major-general.

Peter Irvine Chiswell was born in Nantwich, Cheshire, in 1930, the elder son of an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was educated at Allhallows, Devon, where he was head of school, and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where he was a senior under officer. In 1951 Chiswell was commissioned in his local regiment, the Devonshires. Three years later, after seeing action in the Mau Mau campaign in Kenya, he joined the Parachute Regiment on attachment, before transferring to the permanent cadre.

When President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, two parachute battalions, including Chiswell’s, were sent to Cyprus on standby but were immediately drawn into the campaign by the Greek-Cypriot guerrilla organisation the EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) to end British colonial rule and unite the island with Greece, much to the alarm of Turkey and Turkish Cypriots.

During an anti-terrorist sweep in the Troodos mountains he opened a first-floor door at night thinking it led into another room, but instead fell 20 feet, breaking his wrist and fracturing his skull. It was ironic, given the number of parachute jumps he completed without injury.

Meanwhile, Anthony Eden, the prime minister, had decided to mount a joint intervention with the French to take back the Suez Canal, and the two battalions were flown home to prepare for airborne insertion. In the event, only one battalion was dropped, on el-Gamil airfield west of Cairo. Chiswell, by then an acting company commander, went by sea to Port Said with the other. When the intervention was brought to an ignominious halt by the threat of US sanctions, he returned to Cyprus with his company to continue the campaign against the EOKA.

In 1958 he married Felicity Martin, the daughter of a Lloyd’s insurance broker, whom he had met when he was best man to a brother officer and she was a bridesmaid. She survives him, along with their two sons: Hugh, who worked for Guide Dogs for the Blind; and James, who followed his father into the regiment, and became a major-general and the director of special forces.

After a stint as adjutant of a Territorial Army (TA) parachute battalion comprising many veterans of the Second World War, and then an instructional post at Mons Officer Cadet School, Aldershot, Chiswell attended the Staff College in Camberley. He returned briefly to 1 Para in Bahrain and the Persian Gulf before in 1963 joining the headquarters of the British garrison in Berlin as the staff officer responsible for discipline and ceremonial. On the face of it, the job did not seem particularly apt for him, but Berlin was the goldfish-bowl outpost of western democracy, and these were not matters in which there was room for mistakes — not least for the visit of President Kennedy in which the leader of the free world made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Two years later he took a company of 3 Para to North Borneo for six months’ operations against Indonesian troops making attacks to destabilise the new federation of Malaysia, after which he became chief of staff of 16th Independent Parachute Brigade. Promotion to lieutenant-colonel followed, as did a year back at Camberley as a member of the directing staff.

Field Marshal Montgomery had been colonel-commandant of the Parachute Regiment, and on one occasion Chiswell was sent to collect him to give an annual lecture at Camberley. “Monty” talked so much before leaving Isington Mill, his home in Hampshire, that he arrived uncharacteristically late.

After command of 3 Para, first in South Armagh and then Belfast, on promotion to full colonel Chiswell became the deputy chief of staff and commander of the British contingent of the UN ceasefire monitoring force soon after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974, a delicate and multinational task for which he was advanced to CBE.

With his exceptionally broad experience, he might then have been expected to get command of a regular brigade, but was instead (though to his delight) given 44th Parachute Brigade (TA).

His next appointment as assistant chief of staff (operations) for Nato’s Northern Army Group, although he had never served in Germany outside Berlin, indicated the regard in which the army’s leadership held him. In 1981 he was handpicked as the ground commander in Northern Ireland, the year after Sir Richard Lawson (Obituary: May 12, 2023) had been appointed the overall commander with instructions to repair the fractured relationship with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Always a quietly quizzical man, Chiswell was quick to note the improvements there since 1971 in, among other things, intelligence acquisition, but concluded that the security forces — the army in particular — had carried the campaign as far as they could. He saw it his job therefore to keep the army up to the mark, rendering all the support the RUC needed until the politicians could find a way forward. Sir John Hermon, chief constable throughout the 1980s, thought him outstanding, as did Jim Prior, the secretary of state.

His reward came 20 months later with a second command appointment: Wales, a significant command in Cold War mobilisation plans and a place with its own sensitivities. At the end of that appointment he had reached the mandatory retirement age for the rank of 55 and to the surprise of many, who believed he would be promoted one more star, to lieutenant-general, in 1985 he left the army and set up the Buckland Leadership Development Centre to help business executives enhance their leadership skills. He was also retained by the Church of England to improve the same in senior clergy.

In retirement, living near Brecon, he spent much time walking in the Black Mountains, proclaiming he was a “Para in paradise”.