Derek Cooper

Major George Derek Cooper OBE MC (28 May 1912 – 19 May 2007) was a British Army officer, campaigner for refugees, and supporter of the Palestinian people.

Early life and career Cooper was born in Bromley in Kent. He was the third of four children of Captain George Stanley Cooper and his wife, Clara Tilling. The family were comfortably wealthy – the Coopers family were printers, and the Tillings owned a substantial omnibus company. His father was killed in Jhansi in India in 1915, while serving with the Royal West Kent Regiment.

He was educated at Kent House School in Eastbourne and then Eastbourne College. His mother married one of his father's fellow officers from India, Major George Dominic Heyland. The family moved to his estate in County Londonderry.

Cooper failed an eyesight test and so was unable to join the Royal Navy as he wished. Instead, he became an apprentice civil engineer in 1930, working in Greenwich for the Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company. He was sent to Palestine in 1932, where a new harbour was being built at Haifa. He became a Special Constable in the Palestine Police, but returned to Ireland when the project was finished in 1934. His stepfather had died, and he ran the estate at Ballintemple.

He married Pamela Armstrong-Lushington-Tulloch in 1937. They had one daughter, Jennifer-June (born 1939), and one son, Michael (born 1944). His daughter married Jeremy Browne (later 11th Marquess of Sligo).

Army career Cooper joined the Irish Guards as a reservist in October 1936. He was mobilised on 2 September 1939, and worked on the project to build field defences against the expected Nazi invasion in 1940. Having volunteered to join the Second Household Cavalry Regiment, he landed in Normandy on 13 July 1944, serving in France, Belgium, and at the battle for Nijmegen bridge on the road to Arnhem. He remained in Europe until 1946, when he was posted to Egypt with the Life Guards.

He was transferred to Palestine in 1947. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1948 for his service defending the Arab population in Jaffa from the advancing Yishuv forces, in the weeks after the Deir Yassin massacre. A biography by John Baynes, For Love of Justice: the life of a quixotic soldier was published the same year.

His second wife died in Amesbury in Wiltshire on 13 July 2006. Major Cooper died in the same place less than a year later, shortly before his 95th birthday. He was survived by his son and daughter, and two step sons.