Air Marshal Sir Maurice Heath (1909 - 1998)

One of the most eminent of those buried in Bourne cemetery is Air Marshal Sir Maurice Heath, former Chief of Staff, Allied Air Forces, Central Europe, who died on 9th July 1998 at the age of 88. He had also distinguished himself in the late 1950s after his appointment as chief of British Forces in the Arabian peninsular, a new command directly responsible to Whitehall when he was involved in the aftermath of the Iraqi revolution and the murder of the country's young King Faisal. 

His connection with Bourne was through his wife Mary Gibson, daughter of local corn merchant Richard Boaler Gibson and his wife Frances who lived at The Croft in North Road, Bourne, a house that he had built for himself in 1922. The couple married at Bourne Abbey in 1938 after meeting at a dance at RAF Wittering, near Stamford, where Heath was serving and there was an RAF guard of honour at the ceremony. Lady Heath died in July 1988 and is also buried in the grave in Bourne cemetery, as are her parents. 

Heath's appointment as Commander of British Forces in the Arabian peninsular in 1957 gave him unified command of navy, army and air force operations in both the Gulf and East Africa. Chief among his tasks was to direct SAS operations in Oman in support of the Sultan. Under his leadership the combined services finally flushed out subversive elements from their stronghold in Jebel Akhdar. In a personal telegram, Sultan Said Bin Taimur thanked Heath for bringing the Jebel Akhdar campaign to an end, commending his "prompt and valuable assistance in achieving this remarkable success". 

Heath's skills were soon further tested by revolution in Iraq and the murder in 1958 of the young King Faisal II. But there was nothing Heath could do to prevent the withdrawal of Iraq from the Baghdad Pact which had been formed three years earlier with the aim of protecting Middle Eastern oil. Heath flew back to Britain for talks with the Defence Secretary, Duncan Sandys. In effect his task in the Middle East was at an end. 

Maurice Lionel Heath was born in London on 12th August 1909. He was brought up in India, where his father, Lionel Heath, a distinguished painter of miniatures, was Principal of the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore. He came from a long line of artists stretching back to James Heath in the 18th century, a contemporary of Hogarth and historical engraver to King George II. Heath had a natural aptitude for drawing but was destined to do something very different and he returned to England at the age of 12 to be educated at Sutton Valence School in Kent and the RAF College, Cranwell, where he was a contemporary of Douglas Bader. He was commissioned in 1929 and his first posting was to No 16, an Army co-operation squadron of Bristol fighters at Old Sarum. Like many young pilots of his generation, Heath then saw service on the North West Frontier of India, flying Westland Wapitis. In 1932 he returned home and specialised in armaments, training bomb aimers and air gunners. 

Heath spent much of the Second World War as Chief Instructor at the RAF's No 1 Air Armament School. Although he had gained little operational flying experience, in 1944 he was given command of the Lancaster bomber station at Metheringham, in the Lincolnshire Fens. 

The base was home to the highly regarded 106 squadron, whose performance gave Heath first-hand knowledge of the effectiveness of Bomber Command's training. While he was at Metheringham, a member of his squadron, Sergeant Norman Jackson, was awarded the Victoria Cross for trying to reach and extinguish a fire in the wing of his aircraft by crawling along the outside of the fuselage. Heath's own leadership at Metheringham brought him a mention in despatches and he also developed a great respect for his Commander-in-Chief, the legendary Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris. 

After the war, Heath was posted from Metheringham to the Air Ministry as Deputy to the Director General of Armaments, moving on in 1948 to command the Central Gunnery School. From 1950 he served as senior air liaison officer at Wellington, New Zealand, returning after two years to take charge of the Bomber Command Bombing School, where the RAF was on the threshold of radar-linked nuclear delivery. Then in 1955 he returned to the Air Ministry, first as Director of Plans and then as Deputy Air Secretary. 

A less official role but one in which he took great pride was that of one-time mentor of the artist David Shepherd. When he was sent to Aden, Heath invited Shepherd, then best known as an aviation painter, to record the ensuing operations. The outcome was a number of celebrated pictures, among them one of Beverley transport planes operating from upcountry airstrips in the Western Aden Protectorate and another of an aircraft being chased down a Kenyan runway by a rhinoceros. He charged £15 for it but the success of this, his first animal picture, helped Shepherd himself take off in a new direction, to make his fame and fortune as the country's best known painter of wildlife. When David Shepherd featured in the television programme This is Your Life, Maurice Heath appeared as a guest and the artist, by that time a close friend, acknowledged his debt to the air marshal. 

In 1959, Heath was appointed Commandant R A F Staff College Bracknell, a post which he held for two years before moving to his final appointment as Chief of Staff, Allied Forces, Central Europe, a NATO post then based at Fontainebleau, at a time of East-West tension following the Cuban missile crisis. He retired from the R A F in 1965, a year before President de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO 's military command and forced the alliance to seek new headquarters in Belgium. 

On leaving the service, he became a working director of a London firm of estate agents and was also involved with a finance company and was a highly successful appeals director for King's College Hospital and Medical School. In 1977 he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant for West Sussex. He also retained links with the RAF through his presidency of the Storrington branch of the Royal Air Forces Association. 

Heath was a Gentleman Usher to the Queen from 1966 to 1979, helping to organise functions at Buckingham Palace. He was made an Extra Gentleman Usher in 1979, on reaching the retirement age of 70. He also served as chief honorary steward at Westminster Abbey and was closely involved in the 1973 wedding of Princess Anne to Captain Mark Phillips. He was appointed OBE in 1946, CBE in 1957, CVO in 1978 and KBE in 1962. 

A tall, well-built man with strong views, Maurice Heath kept himself fit by gardening and mentally active by writing to The Times when he felt that things needed saying. His marriage to Mary Gibson lasted for fifty years and they had a son and a daughter. After she died in 1988, he married his second wife, Lisa Cooke, a colonel's widow, who died in 1996. Before he died at Pulborough in West Sussex in 1998, Heath left instructions for his ashes to be buried at Bourne because he had such happy memories of his times with the Gibson family at The Croft and had always regarded Bourne as his second home. 

See also

Bourne cemetery     The Croft

NATO chief chose Bourne as his favourite home

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