Career soldier whose aptitude for languages led to happy commissions as defence attaché to Berne and later Luanda.
Like other cavalry officers of his generation, Guy Crofton extended his technical expertise with armoured fighting vehicles into private motoring. He was the owner of unusual cars and a keen rally and long-distance driver. His first driving test was taken on a road steam engine in Co Wicklow aged 16, when he had to explain the controls to the examiner.
The second son of the 5th Baron, Guy Patrick Gilbert Crofton succeeded to the Irish title (created in 1797, with the baronetcy dating from 1758) on the death of his brother. Through the influence of his step-father, the Austrian barrister Robert Flach, he was educated at the Theresianistische Akademie, Vienna, before going to Midhurst Grammar School.
Commissioned into the 9th/12th Royal Lancers in 1971, he served in Germany and as an armoured reconnaissance troop commander in Northern Ireland in 1976. His squadron commander at that time was Major Michael Marman, who had commanded the armoured car squadron in the Sultan of Oman’s Armoured Regiment. Although the coroner recorded Marman’s death in a road accident in 1986 as misadventure, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, in his book The Feather Men, attributed it to a blood feud dating from Marman’s service in Oman. It seems likely that Crofton volunteered for service there on Marman’s advice.
Before then, Crofton had embarked on a technical rather than a General Staff career. He worked with the Armoured Trials and Development Unit after twice commanding a squadron of the 9th/12th Lancers either side of his loan service in Oman. His facility for languages proved an advantage and, after his return, he would interlace his conversation with Arabic phrases while cutting a dash as the cavalry officer back from the desert in his shemagh. In 1990 he went to Washington to join the British Defence Staff, again in a technical staff post.
Promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1993, he worked with the Proof and Experimental Establishment, Shoeburyness, Essex, until appointed British defence attach? in Berne in 1995. The extensive defence-related Swiss manufacturing base brought special interest to this post, particularly for a technically qualified officer such as Crofton. He delighted in the work and as, by that stage, Lord Crofton, entertained generously. He also acquired a wide range of friends and useful acquaintances while climbing, skiing and shooting.
He would probably have welcomed an extension to his time in Berne but was recalled after three years for a Nato appointment in Jutland, followed by another with Combat Development at Farnborough.
For his final assignment, he returned to diplomacy as defence attach? in Luanda. Although the danger of landmines led the Foreign Office to ban independent travel in civil-war-devastated Angola, he took every opportunity to visit the local forces in the provinces under official auspices and to support the work of the mine-clearing charities in the field.
On leaving Angola in 2006 he and his wife drove to England via a tour of Africa through Namibia and Botswana to South Africa, up the east coast to Suakin, south of Port Sudan, took the ferry to Jedda and continued through Saudi Arabia, Jordan — where they were joined by their twin sons — then through Syria and Turkey into Europe. While in Turkey, his wife accidentally overturned their Land Rover and trailer but Crofton retained his customary sense of humour about the incident.
His wife, Gillian, n?e Bass, whom he married in 1985, survives him with twin sons, of whom the elder, Harry Crofton, succeeds him as the 8th Baron.
Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Crofton, defence attach? in Luanda 2003-06, was born on June 17, 1951. He died of leukaemia on November 25, 2007 aged 56
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