General Frank Kitson arrived in Northern Ireland in September 1970 on a mission to lead British paratroopers in Belfast. The 30-year struggle known as the Troubles was just beginning between loyalists who wanted to remain part of Britain and republicans who wanted to break away, and over the next two years General Kitson did many things to shape Britain’s direction. We will do the following. conflict.
By then, General Kitson was considered one of Britain’s leading warriors and intellectuals. He has just completed a one-year fellowship at Oxford University, where he used his time to write a book, Low-Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, based on his decades of experience fighting colonial wars in Africa. He wrote “Peacekeeping” (1971). This book has since come to be considered a classic text in the art of counterinsurgency.
General Kitson was short and stocky, with a rambunctious posture and a high, nasal voice. Although he disliked small talk and spoke rarely, his martial charisma earned him widespread admiration among the ranks.
General Mike Jackson, then a young officer in General Kitson’s brigade, in his 2007 autobiography Soldier called him “the sun around which the planets turned” and said, “He set the tone for the military in a big way.” added. Operational style. ”
General Kitson used his experience overseas to change Britain’s approach to unrest. He established a secret military force, the Military Response Force, tasked with surveillance and occasional assassination of Republican combatants. He provided biased information to local reporters and supported British military efforts to detain thousands of suspects without charge.
On the morning of January 30, 1972, approximately 10,000 unarmed Irish Republicans were marching. Derry city protests against internment. They were walking along the edge of a “no-go” area, where British soldiers are prevented from entering and risk armed attack if they do.
Soldiers from General Kitson’s brigade were waiting for the demonstrators and were planning to arrest several leaders of the Irish Republican Army who were expected to lead the march.
As the protesters approached the soldiers, some began throwing stones. Soldiers responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon. Suddenly, gunshots were fired and within minutes 13 protesters were killed. The other person died in hospital from his injuries. This day became known as Bloody Sunday, one of the worst losses of life during the upheaval, and a rallying cry for Republican forces.
General Kitson was on vacation when the shooting occurred, but upon his return he ordered his aides to dress less aggressively. He said his soldiers should have taken advantage of the confusion and entered the restricted area once the firing started.
General Jackson, who had overheard the conversation, wrote in his book, “There was no doubt in my mind that we had been able to retake the ‘no-go’ area,” but “that would almost certainly have resulted in many more deaths.” I would have done it.”
Just weeks after Bloody Sunday, General Kitson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He left Northern Ireland in his April 1972 and subsequently held a number of senior military positions, including Queen Elizabeth II’s aide-de-camp and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. He was awarded his knighthood in 1980.
His death on January 2, at the age of 97, was greeted with many in London’s newspapers detailing his innovative counterinsurgency tactics and cautiously praising his career, while Belfast’s The Telegraph noted that his “controversial methods have led to him becoming an object of hatred”. The Republican Party of Northern Ireland.”
His death was announced by the Royal Green Jackets Society, a memorial group in memory of his former infantry regiment. The statement did not specify the location or cause of death.
Frank Edward Kitson was born on 15 December 1926 in London. He comes from a 200-year-old family of military officers. His father, Henry Kitson, was a vice admiral in the Royal Navy. His mother, Marjorie (De Pass) Kitson, was the daughter of a wealthy sugar and coffee importer.
He knew early on that he wanted to become an army officer, and after graduating from the prestigious private school Stowe School in 1945, he went straight into an infantry brigade.
He was first stationed in Germany, but it was too late to see combat in World War II. But he was only the beginning of a new era of warfare in Britain’s far-flung colonies across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
General Kitson, who served as an intelligence officer in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising by pro-independence guerrillas, developed the concept of a “pseudo gang” made up of Kenyans who secretly collaborated with the British to thwart rebel operations. developed. .
Eight years of conflict have resulted in more than 10,000 people being killed, more than 1,000 executed, and at least 100,000 held in concentration camps, many of whom were also tortured by British forces.
General Kitson served in what is now Malaysia, where communist rebels threatened British control of the resource-rich colony, and later in Cyprus and Oman. For his services, he was twice awarded the Military Cross, one of Britain’s highest honours.
Over time, he developed a comprehensive counterinsurgency theory, building on his innovations in Kenya. He emphasized the importance of gathering intelligence, developing informants and double agents within the rebels, conducting covert operations and using psychological warfare to eradicate guerrillas.
“If you have to destroy a fish, attack it directly with a pole or net,” he wrote in “Low Intensity Operations,” borrowing a metaphor from Chinese leader Mao Zedong. “But if rods and nets alone don’t work, we may need to do something with the water, including polluting it,” he added.
General Kitson married Elizabeth Spencer in 1962. She and their daughters Catherine, Rosemary and Marion, and her seven grandchildren also survive.
His reputation as a counterinsurgency expert earned him a senior leadership position as well as a fellowship at Oxford University. After his service in Ireland, he led an armored division and the Army Staff College, then took command of the British Army, responsible for the defense of the mainland and other territories.
General Kitson retired in 1985, but his time in Northern Ireland appears to have ended long ago. However, once the unrest ended in 1998, his interest in Bloody Sunday was revived. Prime Minister Tony Blair launched an investigation into the Army’s actions during the event, and General Kitson was called as one of its key witnesses.
The investigation concluded in 2010 with a report that found General Kitson’s soldiers fired the first shots on Bloody Sunday.
The investigation into General Kitson’s leadership did not end there. In 2015, he was named a co-defendant in a lawsuit brought by Mary Heenan, the widow of laborer Eugene Heenan, who was murdered by a loyalist paramilitary group in Belfast in 1973. A component of the group, the Ulster Defense Organization, was associated with the Ulster Defense Organization. The British military — the lawsuit says is a version of the pseudo-gangster that General Kitson has long promoted in counterinsurgency operations.
Although General Kitson had long left Northern Ireland by the time of his murder, the lawsuit accuses him of establishing policies and tactics that were “reckless as to whether state institutions were involved in murder”. Ta.
The case, which also named the British Ministry of Defense as a defendant, was continuing at the time of General Kitson’s death.