Page 14 - CONTENTS

14
OBITUARIES
Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Griffith
The untimely death of Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Griffith on 8 May
2012 has come as huge shock to all who knew him.
Adrian Griffith was commissioned into 6th QEO Gurkha Rifles in 1979
and filled a variety of Regimental postings, as well as serving as ADC
to MGBG and spending time with 14/20 Hussars, the Regiment’s
affiliated cavalry regiment. After attending Staff College Camberley
he served on the staff of HQ 48 Gurkha Infantry Brigade in Hong Kong
before commanding a Rifle Company in 2GR and then 1RGR on
amalgamation. After a staff tour in Bosnia he returned to 1RGR as
Second-in-Command in time for the intervention in Kosovo. His
operational tours encompassed Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and
Afghanistan, but it was his service in Nepal that was to make his
reputation and for which he will be most remembered by the Brigade.
On his first tour, as Second-in-Command in Pokhara, he began to
establish his reputation as one of the Brigade’s experts on Nepal, its
culture, language and people. He was to return regularly, spending
over 10 years in senior posts and serving there during the Maoist
insurgency: this included one notable occasion when he was
kidnapped by Maoists for three days while escorting a BBC film crew.
As Field Director of the Gurkha Welfare Scheme, his final and longest
tour in Nepal, he invigorated and reorganised the Brigade’s welfare
work and created a lasting legacy to the country and people he loved: a
caring and efficient organisation which, quite simply, changes peoples’
lives.
Lieutenant Colonel Griffith was a devoted family man and our
thoughts are with his wife, Anne, and daughters Hattie and Phoebe.
He was warm, witty, clever and kind, and one of the finest officers of
his generation: we are the poorer for his loss, but the richer for having
known him.
6 GR