Dare Wilson ( Major General R. D. Wilson, CBE, MC, late Infantry )

Born 1919. Ronald Dare Wilson was the last CO of 22 SAS without previous special forces experience. Like several before him he came from a background as a paratrooper and infantryman. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Cambridge University, he left Cambridge in 1939 to join the army. He received an emergency commission as a Second Lieutenant in November 1939 and served with the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940. Later he served in the Reconnaissance Corps in the Middle East and North West Europe, being quickly promoted to captain and then major. The Recce Corps, which existed only from 1941 to 1946, provided a reconnaissance regiment of armoured cars and tracked carriers to each of the British Army's infantry divisions, though sometimes they fought as normal footsoldiers. Wilson was awarded the Military Cross in April 1945 and at the end of the war stayed in the army, having already being given a regular commission as a lieutenant in The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, an infantry regiment recruited mainly from the very north east of England. He retained the temporary rank of major and served in the 6^th Airborne Division from 1945 to 1948, first on occupation duties in Norway and Germany and then in the violent last two years of British rule in Palestine before the creation of Israel. He was an acting lieutenant colonel for a year in that time and then went on to the Staff College, Camberley, before serving in 1^st Battalion The Parachute Regiment in Germany in 1949. In 1950 he became a General Staff Officer Grade 2 (GSO2) at the Ministry of Defence but left to serve with the Northumberlands ( like most post-war regiments consisting of only one battalion ) in their tour in Korea, which lasted from November 1950 to October 1951, through some of the heaviest fighting in the war. The Northumberlands next period of active service was in Kenya in 1953, during the early stages of the Mau Mau rebellion. Wilson served as a GSO2 at the Staff College, 1954-56, and later as an acting lieutenant colonel as Assistant Adjutant & Quartermaster General ( AA & QMG ) of the 3^rd Infantry Division in the UK, 1958-59. The AA & QMG ( now called deputy chief of staff and a full colonel) was in charge of a division's administration and logistics.

Wilson became CO of 22 SAS and was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant colonel in March 1960. The regiment had not been back in the UK long, the long campaign in Malaya and the short one in Oman having come to an end the year before. During Wilson's tenure the two remaining squadrons settled at their new base at Hereford and began developing a post-Malaya role for themselves. Before the fighting in Oman in 1958-59 much of the training had been on jungle warfare but those few months had shown that mountaineering skills were required. All operators were all already parachutists but now the new skill of free-fall parachuting was being developed. Wilson himself was a keen skydiver and soon HALO was an accepted method of entry. The emphasis now was on maximum flexibility and accordingly each troop of which there were ( and are ) four in a squadron adopted a specialist role, these being Boat, Mountain, Air and Mobility. The SAS was now to be   a " fire brigade ", capable of immediately deploying on operations in any theatre. By now the attempts by the Paras to take over the SAS had stopped, after in 1957 the latter became a permanent regiment and adopted the beige beret they worn until 1944 when they were forced to change to the Airborne Forces maroon. There were no active operations by 22 SAS during Wilson's command but much work was done on reshaping the regiment for the future. He was succeeded in mid-1962 by the first CO to come from within the regiment, John Woodhouse. This was the beginning of the maturing of the regiment, as it developed its own core of long-service NCOs and officers with service dating back to 1950, with a few wartime SAS members still serving. 21 SAS had always been commanded by men with experience of the World War 2 special forces units.

Wilson attended the Canadian National Defence College and was then Colonel General Staff at I (BR) Corps in the British Army of the Rhine from 1963 to 1965. In 1966 he was promoted to brigadier and took command of 149 Infantry Brigade (TA), moving the following year to be Brigadier AQ ( Adjutant/Quartermaster) at Headquarters Middle East Command in Aden and then Cyprus. Promotion to major general in 1968 was followed by an assignment as Director Land/Air Warfare at the Ministry of Defence and being created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) which succeeded the membership (MBE) he had received in 1949. He stayed at the MOD, and in 1969 became Director Army Aviation ( he was a helicopter and light aircraft pilot ). Major General Wilson retired in September 1971 and became a farmer in Somerset and also involved in conservation, serving as Exmoor National Parks Officer in the mid-70s. He finished his degree at Cambridge and then married the much younger Sarah Stallard in 1973. Always a keen sportsmen he had been a member of the Army Cresta Run Team and the Army Rifle VIII. From 1962 to 1965 he was captain of the British Free Fall Parachute Team and at the same time Chairman of the British Parachute Association.