John Woollett

Major-General John Castle Woollett, CBE MC (5 November 1915 – 30 May 2007) was a British Army officer. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1935 and studied for a degree in mechanical sciences at St John's College, Cambridge. Woollett joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France in September 1939, at the start of the Second World War. After the BEF was evacuated to the United Kingdom in 1940 he volunteered for commando service. Woollett commanded the demolition engineers in Operation Archery, a 1941 raid on Vågsøy in German-occupied Norway. He commanded 16 Field Squadron (later 16 Assault Squadron), an armoured engineer unit, from 1942. With the 79th Armoured Division he took part in the North-West Europe campaign of 1944–45, assisting with river crossings and demolition of German strongholds, and won the Military Cross.

After the war Woollett attended the Staff College, Camberley, and was sent to Burma to help prepare their armed forces for independence. He returned to the United Kingdom to command 51 Port Squadron and instruct at the Staff College. He was appointed to command 28 Field Engineer Regiment in 1954 in the aftermath of the Korean War. From 1956 Woollett led the engineering aspects of the Operation Grapple thermonuclear tests. He afterwards held staff roles with the NATO Northern Army Group and the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). Woollett commanded the Transportation Training Centre from 1964 and from 1967 to his retirement in 1970 was chief engineer to the BAOR. In retirement Woollett was a principal planning inspector for the Department of the Environment. He also remained involved with the Royal Engineers as their colonel commandant (1974–78), as president of the Institution of Royal Engineers (1974–79) and skipper of vessels for the Royal Engineers' Yacht Club.