John Nelson (Major General)

Sir Eustace John Blois Nelson KCVO CB DSO OBE MC ( June 15, 1912 - December 23, 1993 ) was a British officer and Major General of the Army . From 1966 to 1968 he was the 12th Commander of the British Sector of Berlin and thus one of the Allied City Commanders .

Beginning of the military career

John Nelson first attended West Down School and Eton College before graduating from the Royal Military College Sandhurst .

In September 1933 he was assigned to the Grenadier Guards as a second lieutenant , and two years later he was promoted to lieutenant .

During the Second World War Nelson served as a member of the 3rd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in Dunkirk, France . In 1940 he was appointed captain . Between 1943 and 1945 he served in the 3rd and 5th Battalions in Italy and North Africa . Nelson was a participant in the Italian campaign .

After World War II , Nelson took over the post of Deputy Adjutant General in the London District in 1946 .

In the same year he became the commanding officer of the 1st Paratrooper Battalion deployed in Palestine . After a brief stint in the War Department , Nelson commanded the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in North Africa.

Between 1952 and 1953 he was a general staff officer on the planning staff that prepared the celebrations for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II .

In 1954 Nelson moved to the British Staff Mission of NATO to Washington for two years and then completed a further course of studies at Imperial Defense College .

From 1959 to 1961 he commanded the 4th Brigade in the Rhine Army and was finally appointed as major general in 1962 to command general of the London District.

Berlin city commander

As the successor to David Peel Yates , Nelson became the new commander of the British sector of Berlin in February 1966 and thus one of the Allied city commanders. Together with the Americans John F. Franklin and Robert G. Furgeson (from June 1967) and the French François Binoche and Bernard Huchet de Quénetain (from 1967), he formed the highest authority of the Western Allies in Berlin . He was thus a member of the Allied Command , which was subordinate to the Allied Control Council .

As city commander, he assumed one of the most important and outstanding posts that the British military had to fill outside of Great Britain. As such, he was on the one hand the military, but above all the "political leader" of his country and exercised a kind of representative status for Queen Elizabeth II, since Berlin was formally not part of the scope of the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain's ambassador residing in Bonn was not responsible.

Like his predecessors, Nelson, as city commander, mainly concentrated on the political and diplomatic representation of his country and his duties as a member of the Allied Command, while the respective brigade commander took over the purely military command of the British armed forces in the four-sector city .

With the move to Berlin Nelson moved with his family in the Berlin district Gatow located Villa Lemm . The members of the British royal family also resided on the property during their stays in Berlin. The function of the host towards the royal family was fulfilled by a British city commander at least once a year when the Royal Birthday Parade ("Queens Birthday Parade") was to be accepted on the Berlin Maifeld at the Olympic Stadium .

His tenure fell crash of the Soviet combat aircraft of type Yak-28 P on April 6, 1966. The two crew members Boris Kapustin and Yuri Yanov prevented the crash on West Berlin territory only in that they the available ejection seats unserved and the machine to the district-Spandau lying Stößensee could crash. Both pilots were killed.

The Stoessensee was in the British Sector of Berlin , so all follow-up measures fell within the responsibility of Nelson. In order to be able to examine the new engine of the modern airplane more closely, Nelson delayed its publication until experts flown in from London could examine the engines more closely.

In February 1968 Nelson was recalled and replaced by James Bowes-Lyon as city commander.

In the same year he retired . Elizabeth II honored him with the award of the Knight Commander Royal Victorian Order and raised him to the nobility .

Private

John Nelson was the son of Roland Hugh Nelson and his wife Hylda. He was married to his wife Margaret (1916-1995) since October 10, 1936. From the marriage the daughters Juliet went (1940-1998) and the former British Member of Parliament Jennifer Forwood, Baroness Arlington (* 1939) out.

He lived in the village of Arundel in the English county of Sussex and always used his middle name as his first name.

In 1945 he ran in vain for a parliamentary seat in the London borough of Whitechapel .

John Nelson died on December 23, 1993 at the age of 81 and was honored with a grand funeral service in the Wellington Barracks in London .

Awards

literature

Robert Corbett: Berlin and the British Ally 1945-1990 . 1991.

Web links

The British city commanders on the GSU History website

Individual evidence

^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff, Bernd von Kostka: Capital of Spies - Secret Services in Berlin during the Cold War . 1st edition. tape 1 . Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95723-705-7 .

personal data
SURNAME	Nelson, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Nelson, Eustace John Blois (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British officer and Major General of the Army
DATE OF BIRTH	June 15, 1912
DATE OF DEATH	December 23, 1993

[1] Sven Felix Kellerhoff, Bernd von Kostka: Capital of Spies - Secret Services in Berlin during the Cold War . 1st edition. tape 1 . Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95723-705-7 .