Thomas Haddon

Brigadier Thomas Haddon (19 February 1913 – 12 April 1993) was a British Army officer who served with the airborne forces during the Second World War, most notably during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Following the war he raised the Singapore Military Forces and served as Chief of Staff of Hong Kong Land Forces.

Early life and military career The son of Major J. T. Haddon of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), Thomas Haddon was born in Farnham, Surrey, England, on 19 February 1913. He was educated at Hamilton Academy, described by the Cambridge University Press as "one of the finest schools in Scotland", and then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He passed out from Sandhurst where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Border Regiment on 2 February 1933. He served initially with the 1st Battalion, Border Regiment, in Northern Ireland, until 1935 when he was sent to the 2nd Battalion of the regiment, where he served in India, seeing active service on the North-West Frontier in 1937. While there he received a promotion to lieutenant on 2 February 1936. He remained with the battalion until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. In the same year he married Clodagh, the youngest daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Bertrand Russell; they had three sons. Subsequently, when the German Army invaded France three months later, Haddon was involved in the rearguard action towards Dunkirk in late May, from where the battalion, by now having suffered heavy losses and much reduced in men and equipment, were eventually evacuated from Dunkirk to England (see Dunkirk evacuation). left to attend a shortened course at the Staff College, Camberley.

Repatriated, Haddon returned to a staff post with the Chief of Staff Committee, in July 1945 attending the Potsdam Conference and in 1948 returning, as Second-in-Command, to the 1st Border battalion then stationed in Palestine; later in East Africa. Transferred back to the War Office in 1951, in December 1955, and for the second time as its commanding officer, Haddon returned again to the 1st Border battalion, stationed at Göttingen and Berlin as part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR).

Singapore, Hong Kong and final years

Promoted to Brigadier in 1958, Haddon raised the Singapore Military Forces (which became in 1961, the Singapore Armed Forces) and was subsequently appointed Chief of Staff, Hong Kong Land Forces.

Haddon was awarded an OBE in 1951, a CBE in 1961, and appointed an aide-de-camp to Queen Elizabeth II, holding that post from 1962 until his retirement in 1968. He maintained association with the Border Regiment as President of the Border Regiment Association in 1966, and Vice-President Border Affairs in the King's Own Royal Border Regimental Association in 1975.

Brigadier Haddon died aged 80 during Easter weekend, 1993. In 1990, he wrote his memoirs, which are available here.