Rupert Wieloch

Colonel Rupert Wieloch
Born	20 April 1959 (age 64) Sheffield, Yorkshire
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Army
Years of service	1978-2014
Rank	Colonel
Unit	17th/21st Lancers
Battles/wars	Operation Banner (Northern Ireland), Operation Granby (Gulf War), Operations Grapple & Oculus (Balkans), Operations Veritas & Herrick (9/11 and Afghanistan), Operation Telic (Iraq), Operation Ellamy & Vocate (Libya)
Awards	US Bronze Star

Rupert Wieloch is an English author and retired soldier. Through his paternal grandmother, he is related to the House of Baden. Wieloch has spoken on a range of social and political issues, including the British Armed Forces, Russia, North Africa and the House of Windsor.

Early life

Wieloch was born in Yorkshire, but grew up in South West London. His grandmother was a direct descendent of Prince William Louis of Baden-Durlach, whose elder brother was the Margrave, Elector and first Grand Duke of Baden. Between the ages of 3 and 12, he attended nine different primary schools, which he says did nothing for his education, but taught him how to make friends quickly. He was in the same house at Harrow School as Prince Mirwais Zahir of Afghanistan and Richard Curtis. When the school stopped boxing in 1976, he published a nostalgic notice about the last match against Eton in The Times. He briefly worked for American Express International before joining the British Army and was commissioned into the 17th/21st Lancers in 1979.

Military career

His early deployments took him to Norway, Denmark, Canada and Germany, where he was a troop leader equipped with Chieftain main battle tanks. In 1981, he commanded a Rifle Platoon of the Royal Green Jackets in West Belfast, where he led the follow-up action after the Crocus Street ambush that killed three soldiers in his company. Wieloch became the youngest Commanding officer|Commanding Officer in the British Army in 1989, when he assumed responsibility for the Resident Armoured Reconnaissance unit in Cyprus. In his book, Belfast to Benghazi, he describes how he hosted the Secretary of State for Defence, the Right Honourable Tom King shortly before Saddam Hussein|Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait. During the first part of the Gulf War, he patrolled the Forward Mounting Base at RAF Akrotiri and deployed one troop to Saudi Arabia under command of 7 Armoured Brigade. This became the first British tank formation to reach the Basra Road on 28 February 1991.

At Camberley, Wieloch was placed in the same staff college syndicate as Lieutenant Commander HRH Prince Andrew and accompanied him to Hungary, where he advised him on the use of tank troops in battle. In 1995, he took an independent squadron from his regiment to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he commanded the northernmost British troops in the isolated area known as the Maglaj Finger. At that time, there was talk in London about pulling out British peacekeepers and on the day he assumed command, his base was attacked by a Bosnian Serb tank position that had previously killed several United Nations workers. In the ensuing action, allowed under the UN's rules of self defence, Wieloch's troops, which included British Scimitar light tanks, Canadian infantry equipped with TOW missiles and a New Zealand artillery section, won a decisive victory. As a result, food and supplies flowed into Maglaj and Wieloch was quoted by the Daily Telegraph correspondent, Patrick Bishop, as saying: “I have no doubt at all we are doing a lot of good here, despite what is being said back in London”. His success with humanitarian assistance meant that when UN observers were captured and held hostage in May, his area was one of the few left alone by the Bosnian Serbs. Later during this tour, Wieloch prepared a convoy of army trucks and escorts to pick up survivors from Srebrenica after the massacre by General Mladic's troops, but was prevented from collecting the refugees by the Warring Factions and UN Headquarters. During the NATO air strikes that began Operation Deliberate Force, Wieloch observed the first flight of a Tomahawk cruise missile that flew low over his base on Sunday 10 September en route to military targets around Banja Luka.

Wieloch returned to Bosnia as NATO's Chief of Public Information and also became the lead planner in Sarajevo for Special Forces operations in support of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He had a pivotal role in the preparation of Britain's response to 9/11 and deployed to Afghanistan with the Helmand Task Force Preliminary Operation to draft the equipment sustainability and urgent operational requirements plans for land vehicles and AH-10, Apache helicopters. As NATO's Chief of Staff in Baghdad, he worked for the American general, who led the attack that killed Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay in Mosul and was awarded the US Bronze Star for his assistance to Iraqi Security Forces.

In 2008, Wieloch was appointed Director of Defence Studies for the Army and joined the Middle East Peace Process working group on Arms Control and Security Cooperation. During the Arab Spring, he was sent to Libya as the Senior British Military Officer, commanding a number of specialist teams tasked with making Libya safer in the aftermath of Colonel Gadhafi's death.

Operation Raleigh

Described by John Blashford-Snell as a tough, young cavalry officer, Wieloch was selected to lead the 1985 Operation Raleigh expedition to the Bay Islands, which lie 30 miles off the north coast of Honduras. Based at Port Royal on the south west coat of Roatan, the historic tall ship Zebu transported the venturers between the islands and his project locations. His scientific and community tasks included: Reefwatch for the University of York; an archaeological survey led by Professor Mark Horton; an environmental waste disposal scheme organised by Marina Ogilvy, a medical project for the inhabitants of the mangrove swamps, a school-build and a lighthouse refurbishment with the support of Trinity House. He dedicated his post-operation report to a young venturer, who suffered a life-changing accident after spending time with his expedition.

Cresta Run

Wieloch had tobogganed in Switzerland since 1983 and was on the organising committee for the Army's Winter Sports Olympiad in St Moritz, when he taught HRH The Duke of Kent how to ride the Cresta Run. In 2014, Wieloch was appointed Secretary of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club and was in charge of riding and racing for the 150th anniversary of winter sports. He was in control of the Cresta Run for the world record on 1st February 2015 – the only time a rider has completed the course from Top in under 50 seconds. During his season as chef d’équipe, he regularly issued a stark warning to new riders: “if you treat her with a lack of respect, the Cresta Run will hurt you”, and he is quoted as saying: “It's not like sending soldiers into Sangin, Afghanistan, but I do treat it in the same way as I would deploying troops to patrol a hostile environment.”

Media Work

In 1999, Wieloch worked with Grosvenor Television Productions Ltd. to create the first digital programme about the role of the Army and presented this to the general public in towns and cities around Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As a spokesperson for the Army Board during the Kosovo Crisis and Sierra Leone intervention, he was authorized to answer media questions and subsequently to publish articles under his own name. In 2001, he was the lead author for the first joint warfare pamphlet on media operations.

Since leaving the Army, Wieloch has been used by all the main British news outlets as an independent commentator on defence issues. When the Chilcot report was released, he suggested on ITV News that the high number of “blue-on-blue” deaths in the first few days of the Iraq War was evidence of poor military preparation.22 On BBC radio and television, he has been critical of the government's decision to merge Defence and Security funding, which he claims has denuded the armed forces of vital capabilities. He has also regularly argued for a more strategic approach to British foreign policy and highlighted the government's inconsistencies in Anglo-Russian relations when he opposed Peter Hitchens in a public debate in 2018. Wieloch supports the West's aid to the people of Ukraine, but has suggested that a long drawn-out war suits President Putin's strategic aim of preventing Ukraine joining NATO and that the West's discredited approach to Libya, Syria and Afghanistan encouraged Putin to invade his neighbour. In the past two years, Wieloch has been drawn into the discussion about the loss of royal privileges for Prince Andrew and Prince Harry.

Writing

While serving in the Army, shadow-wrote magazine articles, scripts and book reviews for five Chiefs of the General Staff. In 2016, he completed a book on the changing face of military operations, based on his experiences in uniform. Since then, he has written books on the British involvement in the Russian Civil War and North Africa.

Bibliography

Books

Belfast to Benghazi: Untold Challenges of War; Mereo 2016 Churchill's Abandoned Prisoners: The British Soldiers Deceived in the Russian Civil War; Casemate 2019 Liberating Libya: British Diplomacy and War in the Desert; Casemate 2021

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