Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Oldman
7th Battalion, Green Howards
8th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

This morning the Sultan’s Defence Secretary and former Army Commander, Colonel Hugh Oldman, ex-Second World War, ex-Staff College, ex-NATO, told the official story of the coup which brought Qabus to power. Colonel Oldman modestly denied any knowledge of the coup. It was, he said, all done behind walls, kept within the family.

(The Guardian, 31 Jul 1970, 9)

Born on 24 June 1914 in Belgaum, British India, Hugh Richard Deare Oldman was a graduate of Royal Military College, Sandhurst, a cricket player and London Metropolitan Police constable from 1936 to 1937. He took an emergency wartime commission with the Royal Norfolk Regiment in 1940. He commanded a company of the 5th Battalion, The East Yorkshire Regiment in the North African theatre and earned the Military Cross at the Battle of Gazala in June 1942.

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