Major General D J St M Tabor CB MC Royal Horse Guards By Colonel P J Tabor MVO, The Blues and Royals My father, David Tabor, who died on the 18th May 2004, joined the Royal Horse Guards from Eton, encouraged to do so by his uncle, Major Henry Abel Smith who went on to command 2 HCR throughout the war and then serve as Lieutenant Colonel Commanding Household Cavalry. While playing cricket at Eton, my father was summoned to see a spectator, Uncle Henry, who quizzed him on what he intended to do after leaving school. On learning that he was headed for the Coldstream Guards, the reply was “No you’re not, you will join the Blues”. After initial training at the Guards Depot which was then at Caterham, he went on to Sandhurst, immediately after which he was made an instant instructor to the newer officer cadets. He first reported for duty at Combermere Barracks where Lt Col Abel Smith had just taken over command. The Regiment deployed to France on 13th July 1944 and undertook operations first in the Bocage country as part of Guards Armoured Division. In the middle of August, B Squadron, in which my father was a troop leader, was ordered to reconnoiter the River Noireau, south west of Falaise, over which the Germans were trying to escape, blowing the bridges as they retreated. He was ordered to save the bridge in a village called Montsecret from being destroyed before the allies could cross it. Having parked their vehicles outside the village, he and an NCO advanced on foot, dealt with a couple of Germans on the way, and eventually had to make a dash for the bridge in full sight of the enemy who were watching the village from a line of OPs on the other side of the river. Under artillery fire, they crawled up to the bridge, removed the explosives with which the bridge had been prepared and tossed them into the river. The Germans were not caught napping in the same way again and all other bridges were blown before the Regiment’s vehicles could get to them. As a result of this action, he was awarded an MC. He was not as lucky on the 21st September near Nijmegen as the Regiment was trying to reach Arnhem. Attacking an enemy occupied house with a PIAT, he was wounded by shrapnel and evacuated to a hospital in an old lunatic asylum in St Alban’s where he soon found himself joined by his older brother, Bu. This was not coincidence. My Grandmother, an indomitable character, found it difficult to see her two offspring in different parts of the country – Bu was at first in a hospital in Chester. Undaunted, she telephoned the Minister of War, Lord Croft, and ordered him to stop the war and sort out her logistical problems. He did so without delay. After convalescing, my father returned to the Regiment and served with it for the rest of the campaign through Germany up to Cuxhaven. He afterwards said that the war had affected him deeply – it had been the smell which he particularly remembered. He told me that, as Adjutant after the war, he used to hold Adjutant’s drill parades on Saturday mornings, which were so unpopular that, once the Regiment was on parade, he had to send the Regimental Police round the barracks searching for absentees. He felt he had had enough of the job when it looked as though he was about to serve under a fifth commanding officer in 3 years. While in command of a training squadron near Carlisle, he and other officers would box their horses to hunt with the Dumfriesshire foxhounds which were owned by a former troop leader in 2HCR, Sir Rupert Buchanan-Jardine. In 1953 he spent
a year at the Indian Staff College where he continued to indulge his lifelong love of field sports, hunting the Ootagamund Hunt, the “Ootie”. We still have a jackal’s mask from those days at home. Back home, he became a successful point-to-point jockey, winning often on his horse, Icelandic. He was a fearless horseman but his racing career came to an end after he had a bad fall at Hackwood outside Basingstoke. He served as Second-in-Command to the present Duke of Wellington when the Blues were sent on emergency tour to Cyprus in 1956 during the EOKA campaign. In 1960, he took over command of the Regiment in Windsor and soon afterwards deployed it back to Cyprus only just after it had completed a 3 year emergency tour there. Things were generally calm but the Regiment exercised regularly all over the island to fly the flag and keep themselves busy. During a visit by C-inC Middle East, General Sir Basil Eugster, on being asked whether there were any problems, my father jokingly complained of a lack of ice for the gins and tonic. About an hour later, a Wessex helicopter arrived with half a ton of ice underslung in a net. When in 1977 I first joined the Regiment in Detmold, I was given the task of buying an ice machine for the Mess. I needed to get a tax exemption form from the Garrison Corporal Major, who was WO1 Godfrey-Cass. Despite never having met me he immediately saw the family resemblance. His description, “Your father was one of the last old-fashioned, traditional commanding officers, sir. Your father was a right bastard”, caused much amusement when related soon afterwards. In the same vein, I remember another regimental officer’s description of him as “God’s gift to purgatory”. Again, much mirth was caused. After two years at SHAPE in France, he took over as Silver Stick, before moving to command the Berlin Infantry Brigade. Military Attaché in Washington followed and then a year at RCDS before promotion to Major General took him to Paris as Defence Attaché. He found Paris intensely frustrating as the French were proving particularly difficult to deal with. His time coincided with an intensive IRA campaign against British people serving abroad. Security at the Embassy reported a suspicious package and, extremely reluctantly and somewhat dismissively, the French police came to investigate. Quickly agreeing this was really a bomb, a huge armoured convoy appeared soon after and the package was removed very gingerly. It was a bomb and we still have the drawings of the bomb’s mechanism. He had been very lucky – at least 4 others had exploded in various British Embassies. His last job in the Army was command of Eastern District in Colchester. He always particularly enjoyed flying the length and breadth of his enormous command looking at golf courses from the air. He was an extremely handy golfer, once having played off a handicap of 3, a characteristic inherited from my grandfather, who had been a scratch golfer in his time. After retiring in 1977, he and my mother moved to the Cotswolds, where they took on a farm, learning through practical experience rather than formal education. Only very recently did he pass on its management to my brother, Andrew, himself a former soldier. He was a real countryman and he turned the family shoot into one of the most enjoyable in the county. He kept a rod on the Colne and never missed an opportunity to spend some time there. He was a passionate gardener and throughout his Army life always left the gardens attached to houses we lived in bursting with plants and vastly improved. But it was his dogs, particularly his black Labradors which gave him the greatest pleasure. They had always done so. He had a pair of them when in command which used hugely to enjoy coursing cats in the barracks in Windsor until the day a cat turned and they were seen fleeing in the opposite direction. He was always accompanied by them wherever he went and surrounded by them out shooting. Then in 1987, my mother died after they had been married for
Obituaries
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