Born: 15 February, 1916, in London.
Died: 3 September, 2007, in Aberdeen, aged 91.
SIR Hamish Forbes was a Second World War soldier whose continued efforts at getting under the wire from German prison camps ear
ned him the complimentary title of "serial escaper". His ten attempts saw him incarcerated as a noted bad boy, and his efforts in tying down manpower thus diverted from Nazi war effort gained him a military MBE.
As a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards in 1940, he received orders near Calais to hold German forces so that troops at Dunkirk could embark. The order meant death or capture, and his valour in helping to hold a key canal long enough earned him a Military Cross.
At Oflag VIIC, Sir Hamish picked up escaping tactics early, discovering that lax drill at parades made counting difficult for their captors and provided cover for escapes. With colleagues Mike Edwards and James McDonnell, they first practised techniques on the commandant's wine cellar, opening the door by removing the hinges.
He dug his first tunnel at Laufen, enterprisingly muffling the noise of breaking through a foundation brick wall by timing it with the camp orchestra playing the Anvil Chorus from Faust. But a suspicious German officer ordered the orchestra to halt, with Sir Hamish continuing for a few beats. He recorded in his memoirs of 1996: "Guards and dogs rushed in, and we tunnellers were caught in flagrante delicto."
Escape seven, at Oflag VIB near Warburg, saw Sir Hamish, 6ft, lithe and lean-framed, improbably given documents describing him as a Danish ballet dancer. He shuffled towards the gate dressed in an orderly's clothes, distinctive mole on his face covered by a plaster. But at the gate, this was pulled off by a guard, and his cover was blown.
Shifted to a jail in Paderborn, Sir Hamish and a companion painfully secreted pieces of purloined hacksaw blades inside rubber piping inserted up their back passages and after lights out cut their way out of the cells, only to be discovered by a German officer paying a latrine visit.
The tenth escape involved Sir Hamish and Rhodesian Wally Saul as members of a "work party" under the charge of a "German NCO" leaving in broad daylight. They travelled by night for eight days, with this escape proving a high point for Sir Hamish, who recorded in his diary the "wonderful feeling to hear the animals calling to each other, being free and in the wild".
Picked up by a posse at a rural railway station, they were taken to a local jail. Here, he and Saul were separately and severely interrogated, so much so that Sir Hamish passed a message to a German girl also interned there to contact his mother after the war, to let her know the fate of her son.
Back at Rothenburg, and after 25 days in the "cooler", he noticed the guards in early 1945 becoming friendlier. With Jaime Russo and Freddy Gray, he took his opportunity one evening when a group was forced aboard a lorry. "We merely faded into the background," he recorded, cutting across country in a night in time to join the American 1st Army for breakfast and a dozen fried eggs each.
Asked in later years why he was such a constant escaper, Sir Hamish modestly responded: "Because it was my duty to do so." He wrote up his escaping history at the behest of his children, some 25 pages of typing interrupted with remarks such as: "Eight pages without a break. Time now for a drink."
Major Sir Hamish Stewart Forbes of Newe and Edinglassie, second but surviving son of Col James Forbes and his wife, Feridah Taylor, was born in London in 1916 into comfortable circumstances, enjoying a town home in Cadogan Place, education at Eton, and spending summers shooting on moors above Newe and Allargue in west Aberdeenshire. He was bright, and won a scholarship to Laurenceville in the United States following a tip-off by Nancy, Lady Astor.
When he and his chum Richard Sharples discovered they were booked to return home on "a rather smart vessel", they traded in their tickets and returned on the tramp Schodack, making a profit on the trip. Until the outbreak of war, and a commission in the regular army, Sir Hamish worked with Eno's, the health salts company, and the sugar broker Czarnokow.
He picked his ancestry well. Descended from William Forbes of Dauch, and through him to Duncan Dominus de Forbes of 1271, he enjoyed the whimsy of another lineage which claimed a pedigree right back to Rhydderch Hael, Brythonic hero of Strathclyde and the original Old King Cole. His passion was heraldry, and he bore the right of the arms of Lord Pitsligo, attained in the '45, following a recognition by the Lord Lyon that the line of Newe was heir-male to the Jacobite Pitsligo.
His interest in ceremonial, heraldry and genealogy, plus his wide connections, made him an ideal choice as secretary of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem at its headquarters in Clerkenwell, London. Heir to the baronetcy of Newe held by his third cousin, Col Sir John Forbes of Newe, 6th baronet, Major Forbes succeeded as 7th baronet in 1984.
A lifelong painter and sculptor, Sir Hamish garnered materials in every prison camp for brushes and oil paints, in one case producing a self-portrait on a bedboard, a work now in the Imperial War Museum, London.
He painted wherever he travelled, in pencil, oil and watercolour, painting members of his family, sculpting bronzes of his wife, Mary, and their dogs, making stone and cement carvings of his coat-of-arms, and illustrating his heraldry on the gates of the 20th-century castellated home he and Mary built at his beloved Newe.
Into his late eighties, he worked several times a week at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop several miles away at Lumsden.
His greatest years were as patron of the Lonach Highland Society, founded in 1823 by his ancestor Sir Charles, 3rd baronet. Lonach is the last remaining Highland friendly society (there once were around 60 throughout the world) which still has its members annually marching in full Highland attire - kilt, doublet, plaid and long sporran, armed with pikes - sampling Highland hospitality at half-a-dozen stops before the games commence.
The day after, sober Lonach Highlanders attend the annual kirk service, and Sir Hamish would be out of uniform, wearing the kilt jacket made for his father in London in 1904, the brown tweed now faded to a genteel purple.
Sir Hamish and Lady Forbes settled with gusto into life in Strathdon in north-east Scotland, he taking a chairing role in the affairs of Lonach throughout the year, and proving himself difficult to emulate, copy or follow, an unassuming man working for the good of his community with self-effacement. When in 1991, Lonach was invited to the Braemar Gathering for the Queen to inspect the colours, he retaught himself to ride a horse, and, mounted on Wizard, led 150 Highlanders over the mountains from Donside to Deeside.
Five years later, with Lonach the sole representatives of Scotland at the 1100th-anniversary celebrations commemorating the founding of Hungary in 896, Sir Hamish led 120 Highlanders and a pipe band to Budapest and a dozen venues over ten days. His idiosyncratic orders to his troops became the stuff of Magyar legend: "Lonach Highlanders - order pikes. Stand at ease. Assume a lazy posture."
Sir Hamish, divorced from his first wife, Jacynthe Underwood, married secondly Mary Rigby MBE. He is survived by Lady Forbes, his four children, and grandchildren.
He is succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, James Forbes of Newe and Edinglassie, Younger.
The full article contains 1305 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
