UF ORDER OF OMEGA

He was transferred to Woolwich and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1921.Like many junior subalterns he spent the 1920s in India and enjoyed a sporting life excelling at shooting, pig-sticking and polo. Back in England he attended Staff College, Camberley in 1935 and then spent a year in Gibraltar with the Heavy Regiment In 1939 he became GSO 2 in 1st Armoured Division. Fighting his first rearguard action in France he was mentioned in despatches before being evacuated from Cherbourg. In 1941 he was given command of 20th Armoured Brigade, but with preparations afoot for landings in North Africa he was given command of the 26th Armoured Brigade.With his reputation riding high after Kasserine, especially among the Americans, he was appointed Assistant Chief of Staff to US 2nd Corps in order to advise them on desert fighting. His commander was the newly appointed, charismatic and mercurial General George Patton. In many ways they were very different but they became the firmest of friends. Dunphie was to recall many years later:At the end of 1943 when George returned to the UK to command US 3rd Army, he gave me a lift home in his plane.

He noticed that I wasn't wearing the Silver Star which he had apparently given me when I was wounded I had heard nothing of it He had his own ribbon cut off his coat and pinned on mine. A nice trophy of someone of whom I'd become very fond.On recovering from his wounds Dunphie returned to US 2nd Corps, this time under the more phlegmatic Omar Bradley, with whom he established a mutual friendship.With the invasion of Europe close at hand, Dunphie was called back to England to become Deputy Director, Royal Armoured Corps (RAC). A tank man through and through with first-hand experience of the quality of Rommel's tactics and his tanks, he was determined that the British should face its adversary with the right armour. This they did with the formidable Sherman tank.At the end of the war, he became Director General Fighting Vehicles at the Ministry of Supply and played a vital part in the introduction of the Centurion tank which was to be the backbone of the RAC for many years.Although offered the command of a Division in 1948, he decided to retire from the Army and join Vickers - for him a fresh opening and a new challenge.

He held various senior appointments in Vickers and became managing director in 1956 until 1962, when he became chairman. "He wasn't very good at plumbing but he knew all about people," was how someone described his time at Vickers. Under his direction Vickers built warships and nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy and for the RAF, the Valiant Bomber and the TSR2, and tanks. He also became a director of Westminster Bank and the Royal Exchange Assurance. He retired in 1967.At 87 he was asked about his recreational interests. He wrote: "Hunting until WWII; shooting until age 80; fishing till age 85 and at present racing (flat)."Charles Dunphie's charm, incisive mind and ability to bring order out of chaos, along with his skill at being able to strip away the inessential, endeared him to those with whom he had served and at Vickers. He could get beneath the skin of a man or a woman on the shop floor because he cared.

Equally he was at home with some extremely strong characters in the boardroom. He possessed great good humour and an astonishing memory.Charles Anderson Lane Dunphie, soldier and businessman: born London 20 April 1902; CBE 1942; DSO 1943; CB 1948; Kt 1959; married 1931 Eileen Campbell (died 1978; one son, one daughter), 1981 Susan Wright; died Wincanton, Somerset 8 January 1999.. THE PROGRESS to independence on 30 July 1980 as Vanuatu of the former Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides was one of the more painful and fragmented in the South Pacific. For nearly 75 years, its 80 coral and volcanic islands with 115 local languages and only 150,000 people, 500 miles west of Fiji, had constituted arguably the ultimate colonial absurdity. With no little justification it was known as the "Anglo-French pandemonium".