Maj John Dixie Churchill was born at Wickford in Essex in 1932. After early education at the local primary school he attended Framlingham School. There he was a member of the Cadet Force in which his activities included attendance at a number of shooting competitions at Bisley.

John joined the Army in 1951 and, after attending RMC Sandhurst, was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment (and its successors) in which he served for 21 years. This service included time in Trieste, Wuppertal, Cyprus during the EOKA uprising where he served as a Company 2IC, and in the Gulf States, including Oman, where he was awarded his Military Cross, and in the Radfan. He also spent time as an Infantry instructor at the Army Apprentice College, Arborfield and was responsible for the Army booklet on Map Reading and Navigation, Map and Compass. The Citation for his MC in The London Gazette of 22 May 1959 was:

During the last two months of 1958, whilst training a half company of the Armed Forces of the Sultan of Oman, Captain Churchill, by his courage and personal leadership of many patrols, imbued the troops with a confidence which enabled them to operate at will in the mountain refuge of the Omani rebels.

On one occasion he went forward alone to within a short distance of the enemy thereby causing them to reveal their position and enabling decisive action to be taken against them.

On another occasion he established a patrol within fifty yards of a rebel post and held his ground until the rebels withdrew under heavy covering fire from other posts. Although slightly wounded Captain Churchill then successfully extricated the patrol.

After his retirement from the Army, apart from some involvement in cadet training, employment in civilian life mainly revolved around sports and recreation management and he successfully pursued an HND course in Business Studies. With the announcement of the formation of trials units for a new element of the TA to be called the Home Service Force, John saw the opportunity to engage in some more, he thought responsibility free, soldiering. In the event, of course, the Army was not going to allow an outstanding soldier of John’s experience to get away with that, so he found himself appointed in the rank of Lieutenant to command 2 Platoon 3 (East Anglian) Company (HSF) 6 R ANGLIAN. During this time he was able to use previous experience from his time serving in the Ministry of Defence to make his troops aware of the likely activities and methods of the potential enemy. After two years or so, the force was deemed at least successful enough to be incorporated as a permanent feature of the TA and John was appointed OC E Company 6 R ANGLIAN in his old rank of major.

John drove training very hard in order to weld a slightly elderly and disparate group of individuals, from all of the armed services, into an effective defence force. In doing so he gained the greatest respect of all the officers and men who served under him. This was most apparent during a party with other HSF units and a visiting US National Guard unit at Otterburn, when he was carried shoulder high round the NAAFI on the backs of his Company. They recognised someone of not only manifest physical courage, but great moral and personal strength too. If John had a point of view about a matter that affected him and his troops, he would express it respectfully, but without fear or favour, to whomever he felt was necessary. Privately he was a quiet man with whom some found it difficult to engage on social occasions, a situation largely brought about by a degree of deafness resulting from his previous service and for which he received a pension (one serving member of the SAS, who was seeking a temporary transfer to the HSF, claimed that his interview with John consisted of two entirely separate, parallel conversations, which never at any point met. Nevertheless they were very successful conversations – the SAS man got his transfer and the HSF got an extremely able soldier). In fact John was a caring man who had a lovely quiet sense of humour. One soldier whose old style standard NATO issue combat suit had somewhat wilted and faded under much heavy washing (as they did), was greeted at one of John’s very occasional inspections with ‘Mmm, Arctic warfare gear, corporal?’. John retired from the HSF in 1989.

Sadly, the last few years of John’s life were not of the best quality. His beloved wife Valerie, known to all as Val, died in 2006. They had married in 1960 and were a devoted couple. They had one son, Jonathan. By the time of Val’s death John had already moved into a home in Wellingborough, beset by dementia and Parkinson’s disease. After her death John was very ill in hospital for a time and then moved into Cedarwood Nursing Home where he was very well looked after for the rest of his life.

John died on 31 August 2008 at the age of 75. He was cremated at the Counties Crematorium near Northampton on 4 September. Ex-members of the HSF formed a Guard of Honour. We send our condolences to his son and his daughter-in-law. Those of us who hopped and skipped in his long, loping wake at STANTA, Otterburn and various other bits of the UK landscape, will never forget him.

BM