[BITList] Major Alasdair Campbell - Telegraph

[wantok at me.com]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9717125/Major-Alasdair-Campbell.html

Major Alasdair Campbell


In December that year a trawler went aground on rocks off the Shetland Islands. Captain George Bain, a pilot with British Airways Helicopters, volunteered to take a helicopter to the wreck and Campbell, one of his fellow pilots, volunteered as winch-man.

The weather conditions were appalling, with low cloud, violent gusts of wind and low visibility further limited by blown sea spray. In the darkness, another helicopter and an RAF Nimrod attempted to provide illumination.

The boat was being swung to and fro by the waves and had a heavy list as she started to sink. It proved impossible to synchronise the operation of the winch with the illumination from flares that were dropped, and for much of the time they had to rely on their landing lights to keep the wreck in sight.

When Campbell was about 30ft below the helicopter on his first descent, he was swung violently into the mast and became entangled in it. The danger to the helicopter was such that the crewman operating the winch came close to pressing the button that would have cut him adrift. He managed, however, to winch him back inside.

Campbell at once volunteered to try again and, during the next 80 minutes, he was winched down 12 times to rescue all eight men aboard the trawler. The skipper was the last to leave the boat, but either through shock or cold he was gripping the rail so tightly that Campbell had to strike him to get him to let go before hauling him aboard the helicopter.

The citation for the award of the QGM to both Campbell and Bain paid tribute to their outstanding bravery and skill in conditions far beyond that normally expected of a helicopter on rescue service.

Alasdair Boyd Macneill Campbell was born at Caterham, Surrey, on April 8 1936 and educated at Wellington. In 1956 he joined the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards from Sandhurst and remained with the regiment for 17 years, serving in England, Germany, Aden and Libya.

In the early 1960s he was the escort officer when the military train between Helmstedt and Berlin made an unscheduled stop at a small station in the countryside of the German Democratic Republic. A young East German couple took this opportunity to leap on to the buffers between two carriages in an attempt to escape to the West.

The East German guard was distracted while Campbell and another soldier managed to open a gap between the carriages and smuggle the couple inside. They were successfully concealed until the train and its illicit cargo arrived safely in West Berlin.

At the height of the Cold War this could have caused an international incident, a court martial and the premature end of Campbell’s Army career. It subsequently became the subject of a Channel 4 documentary.

The Army sent Campbell to Cambridge to read Mechanical Engineering. His engineering studies took second place to moneymaking schemes, the most ambitious of which was the importation of a gondola to the Cam. By the time the craft got to Cambridge on Campbell’s lorry it was barely seaworthy, and the market for cruises in the gondola proved disappointing.

He had two tours with the Army Air Corps as both a flight and a squadron commander and subsequently served in Northern Ireland. After leaving the Army he flew helicopters for British Airways in Shetland and London, and later for Shell in Brunei. He received a total of 17 awards for the Shetland rescue.

When he retired from flying, he settled in Sussex. He enjoyed riding and making cider, and restored a converted motor torpedo boat moored on Chelsea Reach.

Alasdair Campbell married, in 1970, Carol Ruggles, who survives him with their son and daughter.

Major Alasdair Campbell, born April 8 1936, died August 28 2012


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