Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2013/January 2014 | Page 28

INTERVIEW

Ken: from
Top Secret to
Kidnap and
Ransom

I

n the final part of the
interview with Bembridgebased Ken Hicks, Peter White
hears about some of his
experiences as an Intelligence
officer with the United Nations
Force in Cyprus, and leaving the
army to become a ‘Kidnap and
Ransom’ negotiator.

Ken Hicks claims that throughout
his military career he was often
fortunate to be in the right place at
the right time, the reason why he
rose fairly quickly through the ranks.
But while working all around the
world, he never forgot his close ties
with the Isle of Wight and openly
admits: “I just love the Island and
wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Early in his career, when a newly
married young Lieutenant, he was
delighted to be posted to Golden Hill
Fort, Freshwater to train as a landing
craft officer. Ken said: “I couldn’t
believe my luck – just married;
buying our first house at Seaview;
liked boats and getting paid to do
something I loved!”
After training Ken was posted to
a maritime unit in Singapore, and
then transferred to Army HQ on the
staff. Singapore was a long way from
home, when on Christmas Eve 1961
he recalls: “I was staying late at HQ,
waiting for the mail and the Island
papers to arrive, as I loved keeping in
touch with Island news. Everybody
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except the Duty Officer had left to
celebrate Christmas, when a ‘Top
Secret’ signal arrived from the UK,
and when I opened it, it was ordering
a Gurkha infantry battalion upcountry in Malaya to move to Borneo
to counter the Indonesian invasion
which had just started. I warned
the Adjutant of the Gurkhas, using
a special code word to move, and
that was the start of the Indonesian
confrontation – and I had only been
waiting for the local papers!”
Shortly after this Ken was posted to
Hong Kong, into what he described
as a ‘rather sensitive’ appointment
dealing with the then current
situation in Communist China. Even
today, the Official Secrets Act still
prevents disclosure of some of his
experiences.
On returning from Hong Kong,
Ken was selected to attend the
Army Staff College at Camberley
– and afterwards sent to Strategic
Command, as an Operations Officer.
This led to promotion and into
another post, one task of which was
to liaise with the UK Security Service,
some of which was extremely
interesting, unexpected and quite
sensitive - just a touch of the ‘cloak
and dagger’ stuff.
From 1968 to 1971, Ken was the
military organiser and commentator
of the Carisbrooke Castle Tattoo,
raising money for Island charities.
In 1971 Ken was sent to Cyprus
to be the Intelligence Officer of the
UN Force, and had Intelligence