Tommy Turtle

Thomas James Turtle BEM (24 December 1950 – 29 December 2020), known as Touché or Tommy Turtle, was a British Army soldier originally from Ireland who took part in many special forces campaigns, including the Falklands War and the Bosnian War.

After serving in the Royal Irish Rangers and the Special Air Service, he became an officer of the Royal Irish Regiment.

Early life The eldest of the five children of James Turtle, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, and his wife Mary Turtle, a Roman Catholic from south of the border, Tommy Turtle was brought up mostly in the Republic of Ireland and left school at the age of fourteen. He worked in a woollen mill and had other jobs, then when he was sixteen he was accepted into the reserves of the Irish Army. Shortly after that, he joined the Royal Irish Rangers.

British Army In his early years in the British Army, Turtle served in West Germany, Gibraltar, and the Middle East. Unusually, he graduated from the Parachute Regiment Battle School at Brecon, although not a member of the regiment, and in 1977 was accepted into the Special Air Service (SAS).

Goose Green, Falkland Islands During the early hours of 12 May, with eight members of D Squadron, using two-man canvas canoes, Turtle went behind enemy lines to reconnoitre an airfield on Pebble Island, before his squadron attacked it on 15 May to destroy aircraft, radar, and an ammunition dump, with supporting gunfire from HMS Glamorgan. He went on to take part in a raid on Goose Green at the time of the main British forces landings, a gunfight on Bluff Cove Peak, routing Argentine Special Forces, and an SAS attack on Cortley Ridge in boats, just before the Argentine surrender. In October 1988, while serving as a staff sergeant in the Royal Irish Rangers, he was awarded the British Empire Medal (Military Division) for meritorious service in Northern Ireland. In 1990, he became a warrant officer at the International Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol School of the British Army of the Rhine. On 31 May 1992, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the newly merged Royal Irish Regiment, with four years’ added seniority, and the same day was promoted to lieutenant. This was first gazetted in June as a commission into the Parachute Regiment, and re-gazetted in July. His later appointments were in the Directorate of Special Forces, and he served again in the Middle East before retiring to civilian life in 2005. They had four children Thomas James, Gareth and amarie and four grandchildren, William, Freddie, Archie and Matilda. He died of cancer on 29 December 2020, aged 70. An obituary said of him that he was "a tall, strongly built Irishman possessed of good looks, charm, a gentle brogue and a genial but resolute disposition."