ARMY POST IN LONDON

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27427, 13 August 1954, Page 13

ARMY POST IN LONDON

BRIGADIER GILBERT APPOINTED (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 12. Brigadier H. E. Gilbert, D. 5.0., 0.8. E., officer commanding the Southern Military District while Brigadier J. T. Burrows, DS.O., E.D., is commanding New Zealand’s force in Korea, has been selected for appointment as the Army’s senior liaison officer in London. This was announced by the Minister of Defence (Mr T. L. Macdonald) today. Brigadier Gilbert will leave for Britain toward the end of this year. In London he will succeed Brigadier L. W. Thornton, 0.8. E., who will return to New Zealand.

Brigadier Gilbert, who is 38, was commissioned in the Regular Force as a graduate from the Royal Military College. Duntroon, in 1937. After the outbreak of war, he was appointed the first adjutant of the 6th New Zealand Field Regiment, and by the end of 1943 he was commanding this unit in Italy. In the latter stages of the war he was G.S.O. I of the 2nd New Zealand Division, and for some time held the same appointment, part-time, in New Zealand’s post-war division. For 12 months from July, 1946, Brigadier Gilbert was New Zealand military liaison officer in Melbourne and New Zealand representative on the Joint Chiefs of Staffs in Australia, the organisation responsible for the preparation of plans for the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan. As Director of Plans and Intelligence at Army Headquarters for five years from 1948, he was New Zealand’s military representative at a number of overseas conferences, notably those connected with the Anzus Pact