Field Marshal Sir Nigel Thomas Bagnall, was a career British Army officer who served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine, from 1983 to 1985, and then as Chief of the General Staff (CGS), the professional head of the British Army, from 1985 to 1988. Early in his military career he saw action during the Palestine Emergency, the Malayan Emergency, the Cyprus Emergency and the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, and later in his career he provided advice to the British Government on the future role of Britain's nuclear weapons.
Field Marshal Sir Nigel Bagnall, pictured here in 1989.
Bagnall served in Palestine in the late 1940s
Bagnall commanded the British Army of the Rhine in the mid-1980s, at the height of the Cold War.
British Army of the Rhine
British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) is the name given to two British Army formations of the same name. Both were originally occupation forces in Germany, the first after the First World War and the other, active after the Second World War and during the Cold War, eventually becoming part of NATO's contribution to allied forces there. Both formations had areas of responsibility located around the German section of the River Rhine.
Formal group photograph of British and French officers and commissioners outside the house of the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies of Occupation, Marienberg
18th Hussars in Cologne, 6 December 1918.
Field Marshal Lord Plumer, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the British Army of the Rhine, taking the salute from the 29th Division entering Cologne by the Hohenzollern Bridge
Two tanks passing through Cologne for inspection by the VI Corps Commander, General Aylmer Haldane, June 1919