General Sir Peter Whiteley: Innovative Royal Marine whose exceptional work in the field earned him a role as one of Nato’s top commanders

The decisive contribution of the Royal Marines to Britain’s victory in the Falklands war owed much to the career and talents of General Sir Peter Whiteley.

He rose to be, successively, commandant-general of the Royal Marines from 1975-77, then commander-in-chief, Nato Allied Forces Northern Europe from 1977-79. His seniority in British and international high command – exceptional for a Royal Marine – sprang from his noteworthy service as a commando leader in the 1960s in the steaming jungles of Borneo. It would ensure that, even though the global East-West war for which Nato was formed never happened, Whiteley’s own former Royal Marines command, 3 Commando Brigade, had the combat training that would enable it to spearhead British triumph in the South Atlantic in 1982.

As Nato Northern Europe supreme commander, Whiteley was based at the headquarters known as “Afnorth” at Kolsas near Oslo in Norway, with responsibility for keeping the forces of eight countries at readiness, and their political leaders in co-operative mood.

The spin-off of his prominence, for the Royal Marines, was the continued development of an arduous cold-climate training tradition, of use for Nato’s purposes, but which became central to the British Royal Marines’ combat exercises. This gave them land, air and amphibious capability without which the Falklands might well have proved impossible to recapture.

Whiteley had been one of several Royal Marine commandants-general in the 1970s who had given emphasis to cold-climate training: Norway’s challenging terrain was found to be just the thing to replace the tropical seas and jungles that the fading-away of Britain’s empire now precluded her armies from training in.

As supreme commander, Whiteley still kept a close eye on the equipment a modern commando unit needs: when ageing snow vehicles let British troops down in a Nato exercise at Storfjord in 1978, he visited, agreed the position was “a bad one”, and sought fast replacement.

A way with getting people to talk, and an inventiveness in using machines to help men marked Whiteley’s apogee as a commando officer in the field – just as much as it was to do later in his highest appointment as a general. In Borneo during the 1960s Indonesian confrontation, as lieutenant-colonel of 42 Commando Royal Marines, he entranced villagers in the former British territory of Sarawak, by then part of Malaysia, by taking with him a small orphaned bear that he had rescued from trappers – and by this distraction he winkled out crucial intelligence.

He also deployed helicopters to assist infantry, as when he led 42 Commando in Operation Lively Cricket against Indonesian attackers at Sedjingan who had in five months mortared 42 Cdo’s L Company at Biawak eight times. This, part of an Indonesian incursion into the Tebedu border area , was overcome in 1966.

When 42 Cdo left Borneo in May 1966, Whiteley accepted an ornate shield from Sarawak’s government as a token of appreciation of his work, and in return he presented the country’s forestry minister, representing the chief minister, with a commando dagger.

Whiteley had by this time already impressed the director of operations in Borneo from 1962-65, Major-General (later General Sir) Walter Walker, and six years later would find himself sought out to be Walker’s chief of staff at Kolsas when Walker was Nato Afnorth supreme commander. Walker retired in 1972, and Whiteley stayed on as chief of staff at Kolsas until 1975.

Whiteley, who in the 1960s was on the directing staff of the Staff College at Camberley, was promoted brigadier in 1968, and, in a second stint in the Far East, commanded 3 Commando Brigade at Singapore.

Earlier in his career, Whiteley had been decorated OBE in 1960 while stationed at Malta, for assisting with police work during anti-British riots following the resignation of Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff (Independent obituary, 22 August 2012). Mintoff had demanded full British citizenship for the island’s inhabitants; Britain had refused.

After his retirement from the Royal Marines in 1979, Whiteley was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, a post in which he stayed until 1984. One of his visitors, a fellow dog-lover, was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Later in his retirement, however, Whiteley abandoned politesse to speak out against Britain’s continuing defence cuts. He warned in 2010 that government plans would mean a decade without a credible aircraft carrier force: “For 10 years we shan’t be able to carry out any amphibious operations where there is any threat from the air”.

Whiteley, the son of an Essex accountant, was educated at Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight. At the outbreak of the Second World War, having just begun studies in English at King’s College, London University, Whiteley was rejected in his attempt to join the RAF because of colour-blindness. He sat a special entry examination for the Royal Marines in which he came top, and served as a gunner in the New Zealand Navy ship Gambia in the Pacific.

In 1948 he married Nancy Clayden, who with their two sons and two daughters survives him.

ANNE KELENY

Peter John Frederick Whiteley, senior military officer: GCB (1979), KCB (1976), OBE (1960); born Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex 13 December 1920; married 1948 Nancy Vivian Clayden (two sons, two daughters); died Devon 2 February 2016.