OBITUARY

SIR GEORGE TURNER

From boy clerk to Permanent

Secretary

sir George Turner KCB, KBE, who died on Friday at the age of 78, was Permanent Under Secretary of State of the War Office from 1949 to 1956, and rose t :this position from the lowest grade of the civil service clerical class.

George Wilfred -Turner was born on January 22. 1896 and, as he used to say, his father, John W. Turner of Rotherham, was a turner by trade as well as in name. George Turner was educated at Rotherham Grammar SchooL and in 1911 joined the War Office as a boy clerk. In 1914 he qualified as a second division clerk, and spent some months in the Home Office and the Post Office before returning to the War Office after the outbreak of war. In December 1916 he joined the army, and served as a private in the Grenadier Guards. He was wounded twice in 1918 and was demobilized in February 1919.

On his return, he-became a founder member and secretary of the staff side of the War Office Whitley Council, and took a leading part in obtaining staff consultation on the p3st-war reorganization proposals. When in 1921 he was himself promoted under their provisions to the administrative grade as an assistant principal, it was a tribute both to his own abilit,y and to management policy. Nme years later he became private secretary to successive junior Ministers, including Duff Cooper (Viscount Norwich) when Financial Secretary of the War Office, and he was promoted to principal in 1934. In 1936, the rearmament drive brought Vice. Admiral Sir Harold Brown into the Army Council in the new appointment of DirectorGeneral of Munitions Supply, and the experienced Turner was made his civil assistant. This assignment, which Turner regarded as a form of relegation, proved the ladder to success. In an early example of services' integration, the Admiral was soon to add the department of the MGO to his own.

This was the nucleus of the future Ministry of Supply; and when it was formed in 1939. Turner accompanied the Admiral there, and niase to be principal assistant secretary in 1939, under secretary in 1941, and second secretary in 1942. He did not gain further promotion in the Ministry, but returned to the War Office in 1949 as permanent secretary, a promotion which he modestly referred to as " geographical ". His tenure saw the Korean War, with its sequel of longer national service, and a new rearmament programme; and this was followed by the troubles in Egypt, Malaya, East Africa, and Cyprus. Towards the end of his service, the army in