Michael Elliott

A military story, but very much a Cambridge life.

Perhaps Mike's most notable public appearance was his last when he was honoured with a military funeral by his regiment, their first since the second war, at St Benet's a few corners from his college with uniformed officers and men as pallbearers and a yeoman trumpeter in dress uniform to fill the church with a virtuoso rendering of the Last Post. Thus, the two main strands of his life came together, science and engineering, despite leaving Queen's more than 50 years earlier, and military, despite hanging up his spurs more than 40 years earlier. The reason for this singular honour cannot be made clearer than by quoting from his funeral tribute. Mike was born in Britain's Ismailia base in 1948 to an army officer father and wrns officer mother on evacuation from Palestine. Mike continued a peripatetic lifestyle by living in France, Germany, Singapore, Norway, the US and finally part time in Italy. He was despatched to board at Rossall on the Fylde coast aged eight becoming Junior School Head Boy and Drum Major of the Cadet Force's marching band of 30 musicians. Put up a year as a result of talent and hard work he had to choose as he turned just 17 between offers from both Oxford and Cambridge as well as whether to go up in 1965 or 66. Engineering placements with the Bundesbahn in Stuttgart and with Marconi, who sponsored him through Cambridge, duly came his way. As a 1966 first year Exhibitioner he obliged Queens with a First and then decided on a business career. A member of the Armoured Wing of the OTC, he then joined the Sherwood Rangers in Nottingham, but as his business career took off he could not combine both so in 1979 he retired from the Sherwoods as a Captain. Having already added an MBA from INSEAD in 1974 he went into shipping and was promoted into ever increasing responsibility moving to live in Norway and then New York as President (Chief Executive) of Barber Blue Sea Line an Anglo-Scandinavian joint venture operating cargo vessels between the US, the Middle East and the Far East. He had the misfortune to suffer ill health in the early 1980's involving major abdominal surgery, which forced his premature retirement and finding his options much narrowed, there followed a period of reappraisal and unexpected life altering change including a permanent retreat from paid employment.

What he did over thirty years for those war time Sherwood Rangers who needed the therapy of a regular return to the battlefields or were just the usual run of veterans needing the support of their regimental association was simply extraordinary. If they had not been in the Yeomanry, they would have had the support of a home headquarters fully funded by the government because they would have had formal links to the regular army.  Mike did everything that a paid HQ would have done and more and all entirely voluntarily. As an obvious highflyer in a conventional sense in his younger days, brought low, he was able to reinvent success turning it into a life of service. Returning in the 2000's to live in Cambridge Mike was able to re-engage with his interest in science and engineering, this time not employed in the day to day, but as an investor in startup businesses, with a view to supporting new ventures not just with funding, but with his incisive and well informed combination of business and science. It may be fair to say that the two strands of his life informed each other and came together via his organisational and presentational abilities honed in the military. As a small investor he joined with others of comparative scale, but disproportionately larger insight to mentor and ginger those in the sometimes lonely position of pushing innovation boundaries. An insight into this was given at his funeral by friend and colleague, Dr Jane Stevens, under the apt description "a business angel". Mike was married twice and supported by Linda his first wife and Tania his second, a long time resident of Cambridge. There were no children, but he was visibly fond of the younger generation, the children and grandchildren of the wider families he was part of.

Simon Elliott (2023)

Colonel Jonathan Hunt OBE's Funeral Tribute

I first met Mike in about 1970 when he joined the regiment. It was part of the volunteer military known as the Territorial Army. He was a newly commissioned officer. On first meeting he appeared to be rather grown up and well educated and serious minded but we soon discovered he was amused by the same things that amused us and that he was good fun, extremely bright, and learned fast. This was the era of the Cold War, and that being the case the task was to demonstrate levels of capability sufficient to act as a deterrent. We the Sherwood Rangers, and all the TA took it seriously. Mike played a full part. In 1994 I was appointed Honorary Colonel of the Sherwood Rangers and also Chairman of its Regimental Association. The Association is the unit's own Welfare Charity with wide remits and duties. Our Association was and is a volunteer organisation. My first task was to find both an Hon Secretary (the person who does most of the actual work) and an Hon Treasurer (who does the rest) and in one of the more inspired decisions of my life I asked Mike Elliott to become the Hon Secretary and Nick Cornish to be the Hon Treasurer and here we are thirty or so years later and they were both in post when Mike died. 1994 was a pivotal moment for the Sherwood Rangers. Firstly the Cold War had been won and the role of the serving Sherwood Rangers was changing from that described, to providing reinforcements to the regular army when on live operations like Iraq and Afghanistan. This meant that our volunteers were being sent into harm’s way for the first time since the Second World War. This called for live welfare responsibilities not necessary in peacetime volunteer soldiering. There was another change evolving. Fate had decreed that the Sherwood Rangers in the Second World War had been a highly acclaimed tank regiment, as a result saw more heavy fighting than most and endured heavy casualties, more than its strength in killed or wounded. When families of those who had died were included along with the survivors this was a large scope of responsibility for the Association. By the late 1980s the survivors were retiring and now had time to spare. Some dealt with their emotions best via a need to avoid all contact which could bring back memories they did not want. Others felt the need to re-gather and formed a Branch of the Association with whom Mike had the closest contact and began to return to NW Europe as a form of therapy or out of a need to rationalise their recollections. They were not alone and in 1994 there was a huge National commemoration of the D Day Landings in which the Sherwood Rangers had played a role in the first wave. We, running the Association, already knew many of those who had fought in the War via various regimental gatherings down the years and counted them as friends who we admired. We were clear it was our duty to support and assist them. As Hon Secretary, Mike saw it as his job. The Association therefore increasingly took over the logistics of these now annual visits. In the beginning they were more like pilgrimages by those who had served in the War to identify the places where it all happened and to visiting the graves of their fallen comrades. This triggered the desire to erect what in the end was a chain of about ten commemorative memorials from the beach to Germany’s borders. A consequence of this was they developed into a reunion between the Sherwood Rangers and the local populations to whom they had restored freedom, The Regiment had not expected the degree of the support and gratitude for what they had done and this was repeated in each country they revisited. These visits to the memorials and the graves evolved into simple ceremonies of commemoration often along with the local mayor, veterans and local veteran standard bearers, and included the laying of wreaths plus National Anthems and the Last Post. Sometimes they involved a full Drumhead Service in addition and sometimes one hundred children would one by one lay white roses on our memorial. Mike it was who planned the timetable and had also written the script for each ceremony or agreed it in advance. Sometimes there were maybe three or four such ceremonies a day. A Battlefield tour element had also gradually became interwoven into the foregoing elements as the post war generations of Sherwood Rangers, our generation, wanted to come and be shown where the fighting took place. For some years the people who provide the narrative were the veterans themselves. As the veterans gradually became unable to attend or sadly died it was Mike who mastered the narrative and delivered it himself with some help from others. Then of course there would be the coach and ferry bookings and the hotel bookings often well over a year in advance and the provision of meals including a formal dinner to entertain all those who had provided local support. All were Mike’s primary responsibility. He was also in the front of the coach with the map navigating narrow lanes where the fighting happened. He would also have come over days before with Tania to drive the routes and clear the stopping places and lunch places. It would be wrong to give the impression that Mike had no help. There was plenty of assistance provided from amongst us all, however at the centre of it all was Mike and his magnificent staff work.