Marston Tickell

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Major-General Marston Tickell (1923-2009) was a British Army officer.[1]

Background

Tickell came from a family with a longstanding military engineering tradition. His father was Major-General Sir Eustace Tickell, who like his son, served as Engineer-in-Chief of the British Army.[2]

He was educated at Wellington School.[3]

Military Career

Tickell enlisted in April 1942 and was commissioned two years later. He served as a Royal Engineer, with his company building the first bridge across the Rhine.[4]

After the War, Tickell studied at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, gaining a first.[5]

His subsequent career included posts as an instructor at the Royal School of Military Engineering, Adjutant of the 11th Armoured Division, a period at the Army Staff College at Camberley, and an appointment at the Military Operations department in the Ministry of Defence.[6]

In 1957 Tickell took command of 23 Field Squadron in Libya and accompanied it to Cyprus[7] and Jordan.[8]

Tickell took the US Command and Staff Course at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1959 before returning to Camberley as a instructor. He subsequently commanded one of the three divisions of the Staff College as a colonel and attended the Indian National Defence College in Delhi.[9]

He served on the Joint Planning Staff in London before commanding 4th Division Engineer Regiment in Germany and then 12 Engineer Brigade in England.[10]

Northern Ireland

Tickell served as Chief of Staff at Headquarters Northern Ireland from early 1971 to the end of 1972, a period which included the first death of a British soldier at the hands of the IRA, the introduction of internment, Bloody Sunday and Operation Motorman.[11]

P.R. Role

Keith McDowall, the director of Information to Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw, described Tickell as a " a rarity among army officers. He grasped that press and communications work meant much more than getting a regiment’s name in print and trying to tell journalists what to think."[12] McDowall recalled:

Later, when the IRA set off a series of bombs in Belfast designed to generate many casualties and mass panic, Tickell rang and suggested naming the outrage Bloody Friday.
I instructed the press office to issue just the one line: “It looks like Bloody Friday.” That was the headline that went round the world. Tickell and I felt somewhat we had avenged the anti-British propaganda coup the IRA had achieved with the naming of Bloody Sunday.[13]

Later years

Tickell was promoted to major-general in 1973 to become Engineer-in-Chief.[14]

From 1975 until his retirement from the Army in 1978 he served as Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham.[15]

External Resources

Notes

  1. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  2. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  3. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  4. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  5. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  6. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  7. Major-General Marston Tickell, telegraph.co.uk, 9 November 2009.
  8. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  9. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  10. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  11. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  12. Lives remembered: Major-General Marston Tickell and The Right Rev Noël Jones, The Times, 21 September 2009.
  13. Keith McDowall Lives remembered: Major-General Marston Tickell and The Right Rev Noël Jones, The Times, 21 September 2009.
  14. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.
  15. The Times, Major-General Marston Tickell: Engineer-in-Chief of the Army 1973-76, The Times, 17 September 2009.