Roderick Walker

The Oman Campaign

The kingdom of Muscat and Oman had been a British Protectorate since 1891 and by the 1950s was ruled by Sultan Said bin Taimur, who by the late 1950s was facing serious opposition and uprisings from the imam of Oman. Britain helped Taimur to suppress the imam's first revolt in 1955, however this caused resentment from Saudi Arabia and Egypt who then backed the imam's second revolt.

In November 1958, the British sent D Squadron 22 SAS under the command of Major John Watts from Malaysia to conduct a recce of the mountain. Watts was accompanied by his second in command, Captain Walker. On 27 December 1958, Walker gained a lodgment on the north side of the Jebel and climbed a rope which they had fixed to the rock face. Steadying himself in a cleft in the rock, Walker pulled the pin from a grenade and hurled it over the lip above him. It killed one of the enemy and scattered the rest. Walker and his men then reached the plateau and by dawn they had killed another eight. Walker was later awarded the Military Cross for his bravery.

While this conflict was framed as the defense of an ally, later declassified documents found British officials knowingly propped up a regime where chattel slavery remained legal, with the Sultan personally owning thousands of slaves.

Wary of international scrutiny, the British government supported a total press visa ban and RAF strikes on Omani villages killings women and children were kept hidden for over six years.

The Indonesian Confrontation

By the 1960s, Walker, by then a Major had been assigned to serve under Lieutenant Colonel Bill Becke as a member of the two-man Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Djakarta, Indonesia.

During his posting the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation began, when Britain as part of the dismantling of the Empire in Southeast Asia, proposed to combine its colonies on Borneo with the Federation of Malaya to form a new country called Malaysia.

To anti colonial movements, Malaysia was a feat of colonial engineering to ensure its vast military presence and extraction of rubber and tin.

The 1963 sacking of the British embassy, which Walker helped to crush, was a targeted political response to the British Empire. Walker’s “legendary” act of playing bagpipes was seen by locals as a display of colonial arrogance.

In 1964, British Director of Operations secured permission to launch Operation Claret, which directly violated international law and the UN charter.

Later career

Walker later went on to command 23 SAS (TAVR) a service involving him in training potential "stay-behind" parties in northwest Europe in the event of a Warsaw Pact attack. He was appointed OBE on conclusion of his command. He returned to intelligence work and after promotion to brigadier became a deputy commander of a military district in England, before being promoted to Security Chief for the Army North of the Border, during this time he was convinced that Soviet Union Spetznaz operatives had carried out detailed reconnaissance of targets in Scotland in the guise of long-distance drivers.