Lieutenant Colonel John Michael Woodhouse, (29 September 1922 – 15 February 2008) was a British Army officer credited with helping to reform the Special Air Service.
In 1956 he was appointed an MBE for doing "more to enhance the operational reputation and technical skill of 22 Special Air Service Regiment than any other officer since the unit's formation six years ago".
He was described by David Stirling as a man "who created the modern SAS during the Malayan campaign by restoring to the regiment its original philosophy”.
Early years John "Jock" Woodhouse was born in Kensington, London, on 29 September 1922, the only son of Brigadier Charles Woodhouse, a former Colonel of the Dorset Regiment. He received his education at Malvern College and commissioned into the Dorset Regiment in 1942.
Military career Second World War Woodhouse was not a member of the SAS during the Second World War. He fought with the East Surrey Regiment in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy. While commanding with 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, he received his Military Cross for leading an attack on buildings occupied by tank crews which turned out to be the headquarters of the 16th Panzer Division. In March 1944, a patrol he was commanding was ambushed near Cassino and he was taken prisoner and held until the 125th US Cavalry Regiment arrived on 12 April 1945.
Rejoining the army after the war, he completed a Russian course in September 1946, and was posted to Germany to work first for Allied Control Commission, then in September 1947 for the Anglo-Soviet Border Commission in Lübbecke. In 1948 he was in Austria, second-in-command of a company in the 1st Battalion, the Dorset Regiment. An accomplished skier, he came third in the British Army Ski Championships in 1949.
SAS years In 1950, he was sent to Hong Kong as part of the Divisional Intelligence Cell of the newly formed 40th Infantry Division, there to deter the Chinese Communist Army under Mao Tse-tong from invading the British colony. In Hong Kong he worked for Brigadier ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, a former Chindit and SAS commander during WW2. When Calvert was put in charge of raising a ‘Special Force’ for Malaya, to operate in the deep jungle, befriend local tribes, and hunt down Communist terrorists, Woodhouse volunteered, saying, of Calvert: “As soon as I met him I knew he had that spark of genius that a soldier is lucky to see at close quarters even once in his career".
Malaya On 19 August 1950 Woodhouse flew from Hong Kong to Malaya to take up his post as Intelligence Officer with the Malayan Scouts under Calvert, now promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. The Scouts moved to their new camp at Dusan Tua on 29 September 1950 to complete jungle training, and in January 1951 'A' Squadron was judged ready for operations.
Woodhouse and about 60 men in ‘A’ Squadron were tasked with locating and destroying terrorist bases on the northern border of Johore with Pahang. Under the Briggs Plan, the main military effort since June 1950 had been to clear Johore of terrorists, moving methodically from South to North. The squadron had no air cover and were bogged down by the worst rains since 1926, so progress was slow, but at the end of February a three-man patrol spotted six terrorists walking through a clearing and followed them to their camp. The next day the patrol's troop attacked the camp, killing or dispersing the terrorists and capturing supplies destined for Jahore. A police post was established among the local tribes and became an intelligence source for later operations. After 3 months, ‘A’ Squadron returned from the jungle with its first operation deemed a success.
Overall, the initial results of the re-formed SAS were not as successful as had been hoped. Although Calvert was inspirational, he could also be controversial: some saw him as releasing men from jail to put them into soldiering - not ineffective, but wild and undisciplined. Woodhouse himself commented that he found the troops "not up to scratch...extremely careless, very noisy and rather bored, going round the jungle in a slaphappy way".
Early in 1951 'B' Squadron arrived from the UK, recruited from 21 SAS (Territorial Army) and men from 1st and 2nd SAS regiments from WW2, under the command of Major Tony Greville-Bell, himself a veteran of Stirling's SAS. On some accounts, Greville-Bell was appalled by the lack of discipline of the troops in Malaya, clashed with Calvert, resigned and returned to the UK.
In June 1951 Calvert fell ill and was medically evacuated to the UK. He never returned to Malaya, ending his military career under something of a cloud. Woodhouse was put in charge of 'B' Squadron, and was joined by 'C' Squadron under Major Peter Walls. 'C' Squadron were formed mainly from Rhodesian SAS and were highly professional, serving in Malaya until 1953.
Lieutenant Colonel John Sloane of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders took over command of the Scouts from Calvert in July 1951, to “clear out dead wood” and “cleanse” the regiment, bringing ‘more conventional measures of discipline’ and ‘normal military order’. By the end of 1951 all three squadrons were deployed in Jahore, but in infantry roles at the jungle fringes, losing, or never learning, the art of small force jungle operations. The regiment moved to Singapore and was officially re-titled the 22 SAS Regiment in 1952.
Woodhouse returned to the UK at the end of his tour in March 1952. Before flying back, he trained a new troop which included John Slim, a future CO of 22 SAS. Woodhouse had spent 14 months of his 18-month tour in the jungle. He left with three clear convictions:
The men for the regiment must be carefully selected The internal administration and discipline must be good Calvert's tactics, together with the risks inherent in them, must be accepted.
He later said that the problem in the early days was an acute lack of training for the troops – that he and another officer tasked with training them had perhaps 9 months jungle experience between them, a case of ‘the blind leading the blind’.
Back in England, in September 1952 Woodhouse took command of ‘Z’ reservists and supervised their annual training. Many were former SAS veterans from WW2, and Woodhouse tapped their knowledge of operations and the wartime regiment's selection process. He then organised the first post-WW2 SAS selection course in Britain, for volunteers waiting to go to Malaya, criss-crossing Mount Snowdon in Wales. Woodhouse took part despite suffering a bout of malaria. In December 1952, his SAS duties completed, he returned to a relatively quiet life with the Dorset Regiment (TA) where he remained for the next two years.
In April 1953, a short paper Woodhouse had written, “Some Personal Observations on the Employment of Special Forces in Malaya” was published in the Army Quarterly. In the paper he describes his experience in Malaya from 1950 to 1952 with Calvert, and calls for a return to patrolling the jungle in small independent groups.
In May 1954 Major Dare Newell was appointed to the newly formed RHQ SAS in London. Newell had joined SOE's Force 136 to fight behind the lines in Albania and Malaya during WW2. Like Woodhouse, he had volunteered to join the Malayan Scouts, and had commanded a squadron in Malaya from 1952 to 1954. In his new London-based role, he liaised with Woodhouse and formally took over the SAS selection process]. The rigorous systems Woodhouse and Newell helped to develop become the basis of selection and training of the modern SAS.
In 1955 Newell drafted a paper many see as embodying the regiment's basic philosophy, in which he said: “Selection is designed rather to find the individualist with a sense of self-discipline than the man who is primarily a good member of a team.” The implication was that an individualist could always chose to be a team player, but a team player may not have the capacity to work on their own. SAS soldiers were expected to work for weeks or even months in isolation, in stressful conditions. Perhaps because of this, when Woodhouse took the Army Staff College exam in 1954, he failed - as did Peter de la Billiere a decade later (de la Billiere went on to become Director SAS and Commander British Forces during the Gulf War).
In January 1955 Lt. Col. George Lea became CO 22SAS with a mission to shake up the regiment and further improve operational methods. In March 1955, Lea brought Woodhouse back to Malaya as Training Officer, and put him in command of 'D' Squadron. In the three years that Woodhouse had been away, the regiment had become more mobile, having perfected 'tree jumping' (low-level parachute drops into the jungle), and making use of helicopters for one of the first times in a war zone. However, the priority for Woodhouse remained jungle craft, particularly the ‘hard routine’: how troops could hide their presence when in close proximity to the enemy. He consulted with anthropologists for advice on building relationships with the jungle tribes (seeing this as the main success of the SAS in Malaya), and wrote short, succinct operational notes for the troops, initially 3 pages and growing to 6 pages long. He wrote:“I moved from troop to troop with an escort of 2 or 3 soldiers. I got to know the area well. I kept a critical eye open for anything wrong. We mostly lived the ‘hard routine’ as we travelled. If I found fault then I had it out with the Troop Commander on the spot first and then with his men. Exhorting, cajoling, explaining with persistence was initially exhausting to me, it seemed to be a one man crusade…but suddenly it seemed to click and come together."In March 1956 Woodhouse was recalled to HQ Squadron to train newly joined officers and see how the efficiency of the squadron could be improved. One of the young officers passing through was Peter de la Billiere, who had undergone selection in October 1956 on Brecon Beacons during which he lost 15 pounds in weight. Dare Newell had run the selection and had informed him he had passed. In Malaya, de la Billiere describes a three-week intensive jungle training exercise run by Woodhouse, with 'five typed pages' of 'curt recommendations' aimed at preparing him for living in the jungle for weeks on end, moving silently, leaving no trace, ready to engage with the enemy at any moment.
At the end of his tour Lea recommended Woodhouse for an MBE. His citation states: 'Many of the techniques now proving successful on deep jungle operations were conceived and developed by him personally and have now become standard procedure throughout the Regiment".
In late 1956, before returning to the UK, Woodhouse describes in his diaries attending a funeral, at a cemetery near Kuala Lumpur, of a New Zealand SAS soldier killed in action: "The crosses of 20 SAS soldiers lay in this place - part of the price of freedom". Many others would also have suffered serious injuries. Colonel Oliver Brooke, CO of 22 SAS from 1953 to 1954, suffered a complicated leg fracture from a parachute jump which required months of hospital treatment in England and crippled him for life.