John Winthrop Hackett Junior

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John Winthrop Hackett
5th November 1910 - 10th September 1997
Nickname	Shan
Place of birth	Perth, Western Australia
Rank	General
Unit	8th King's Royal Irish Hussars
Commands	4th Parachute Brigade Deputy Chief of the General Staff Commander-in-Chief British Army of the Rhine
Awards	MBE , CBE , MC , DSO and Bar, CB , KCB , GCB
Other work	Author

This article is about the British Army officer and author, for information about the musician, see John Hackett (musician).

General Sir John Winthrop Hackett GCB, CBE, DSO and Bar, MC, (5 November 1910-10 September 1997) was an Australian-born British soldier and author.

1 Early life
- 1.1 World War II
2 Post War Career
3 Publications
4 More Information
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Hackett, who was nicknamed "Shan", was born in Perth, Western Australia. His Irish-born father, John Winthrop Hackett Senior (1848-1916), was a newspaper man and politician, and his mother was Deborah Drake-Brockman (also known as Lady Deborah Hackett, Lady Deborah Moulden and Dr Deborah Buller Murphy, 1887-1965), a prominent mining company director.

John Hackett Junior received secondary schooling at Geelong Grammar School, after which he travelled to London to study painting at the Central School of Art. He then completed Greats and Modern History at New College, Oxford University. As his degree was not good enough for an academic career, Hackett joined the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars.

[edit] World War II

Hackett fought with the British Army in World War II in the Syria-Lebanon campaign, where he was wounded, and in the North African campaign, where he was wounded again when his Stuart tank was hit.

In 1944, Hackett commanded the 4th Parachute Brigade in the Allied assault on Arnhem, Netherlands in Operation Market Garden. Then-Brigadier Hackett was wounded yet again and captured. Once he was healed, he escaped and was hidden by Dutch civilians. He wrote about this experience in his book I Was A Stranger in 1977.

[edit] Post War Career

General Hackett's postwar career included, Commandant, Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, 1958-1961; General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Northern Ireland Command, 1961-1963;^[1] Deputy Chief of the General Staff, 1963-1964, and Commander in Chief, British Army of the Rhine, 1965-1966. He later became Commander, Northern Army Group, in NATO.

In 1978, General Hackett wrote a novel, The Third World War: August 1985, which was a fictionalized scenario of World War III based on a Soviet Army invasion of West Germany in 1985. The novel was highly successful, though criticized for being dry and impersonal. It was followed in 1982 by The Third World War: The Untold Story, which elaborated on the original, including more detail from a Soviet perspective.

Following Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti's 0ctober 1990 revelations concerning the existence of Gladio, a NATO stay-behind organisation which explicitly had as goal to prepare guerrilla resistance against the Warsaw Pact forces in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, General Hackett confirmed its activities in Britain, by declaring on November 16, 1990 that a contingency plan involving "stay behind and resistance in depth" was drawn up after the war in the country ^[2].

His (British) military decorations included the Knight Grand Cross, Commander of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Order and Bar, Military Cross, Twice Mentioned in Dispatches.

[edit] Publications

(Note: authorship dates may not be reliable and are for guidance only)

The Profession Of Arms, 1963, ISBN 0-02-547120-1
I Was A Stranger, 1978, ISBN 0-395-27087-1
The Third World War, 1978, ISBN 0-425-04477-7
Third World War: Lecture, 1979 ISBN 0-85287-132-5
Arnhem Doctor, 1981, ISBN 0-85613-324-8 (Foreword only)
The Third World War: The Untold Story, 1982, ISBN 0-283-98863-0
The Middle East Commandos, 1988, ISBN 0-7183-0645-7 (Foreword only)
Warfare In the Ancient World, 1989, ISBN 0-283-99591-2
The Desert Rats: History of the 7th Armoured Division, 1990, ISBN 1-85367-063-4 (Introduction only)
The Devil's Birthday: Bridges to Arnhem, 1944, 1992, ISBN 0-85052-352-4
The History of the Glider Pilot Regiment: An Official History, 1992, ISBN 0-85052-326-5
One Night In June, 1994, 1853104922 (Introduction only)
Map of the D-Day Landings, 1994, ISBN 0-7028-2668-5 (Foreword only)
To Save A Life, 1995, ISBN 1-898094-10-1