career
profile
As Commander British Forces (CBF) Gibraltar 1997
Major General Simon Pack CB CBE
The Last CBF of the Mount
words | Mike Brufal
It came as no surprise that Commander British Forces Gibraltar 1994-1997 Simon Pack joined the Royal Navy. His paternal grandfather was a senior civil servant within the Admiralty, and his maternal grandfather was a Surgeon Rear Admiral. His father, Captain AJ Pack OBE, served in the RN for 30 years and was a well known naval historian, Director of the Royal Navy Museum 1964-1979, and author of two widely acclaimed books Nelson’s Blood (the second edition of which was launched in Gibraltar in 1995) and The Man Who Burned the White House (a biography of Admiral Sir George Cockburn 1772-1853). Throughout his boyhood and early teens, Simon yearned to join the Diplomatic Corps, and was disappointed when, at the age of 15, his father suggested joining the RN. Not to be put off, he reminded his father of his susceptibility to seasickness; and was astonished at his father’s compromise: “You can join the Royal Marines instead”! During his career in the Royal Marines Simon made countless stops in Gibraltar but, from his personal view, the most important was when he met Rosemary-Anne Fuller at a cocktail party on HMS Zulu in 1968. She was staying with her Aunt Joan, a formidable former matron of RN Hospital Gibraltar, who was married to Esmond Ryan then editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle. Romance bloomed, and Simon and ‘Rosianne’ married in 1970. The couple have two children — a son who is a former officer in the Royal Green Jackets and now involved with the commercial property world; and a daughter who runs her
20
own recruitment company. Simon was educated at Fernden Preparatory School in Surrey, then Hurstpierpoint College where he was a fine squash player, subsequently playing for the Royal Navy. At the age of 15 he attended the Admiralty Interview Board and was awarded a Naval Scholarship. On leaving Hurstpierpoint, he spent a year learning French in Switzerland, before reporting for Royal Marines training at the Commando Training Centre
Simon made countless stops in Gibraltar but, from his personal view, the most important was when he met Rosemary-Anne Fuller at a cocktail party
at Lympstone, Devon in 1962. Officer cadets who join the Royal Marines, unlike their peers in the RN, Army or RAF, are commissioned on entry, so within a week Simon was given his commission scroll. There followed 18 months of basic RM officer training, a series of courses which were (and still are) acknowledged to be amongst the toughest in the world. He was then appointed to 40 Commando RM in Sarawak, Malaysia, where he spent almost four years on jungle operations during the Indonesian-Malaysian confrontation. In January 1967 he returned to London to attend a Royal Naval Junior Officers’ Staff Course at Greenwich before joining HMS Zulu later that year as Officer Commanding the Royal Marines Detachment operating in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. In February 1969 he was appointed ADC to the Governor of Queensland, after which he returned to the UK to join 41 Commando RM
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • JULY 2013