George Styles (British Army officer)

Styles died on 1 August 2006, and is buried with his parents at Snell Hatch Cemetery, Crawley, West Sussex.

Styles retired from the army on 16 October 1974, and became an adviser for various companies on anti-terrorist techniques. He wrote Bombs Have No Pity in 1975. He was featured in the Thames Television programme, Death on the Rock, in 1988, in which he commented on various aspects of a counter-terrorism operation in Gibraltar in which three PIRA members had been killed earlier that year.

It was announced on 11 January 1972 that Styles had been awarded the George Cross. The citation for the award was printed in the London Gazette on 10 January 1972, reading:

He received his medal from Queen Elizabeth II at an investiture at Buckingham Palace two months later, on 28 March 1972. The uniform he wore while defusing bombs in Northern Ireland is on display at the Imperial War Museum. After leaving Northern Ireland in 1972, Styles was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 30 June 1973. He became chief ammunition technical officer, with responsibility for all RAOC bomb disposal teams in the UK and overseas.

On 20 October 1971, one month after a bomb killed one of his colleagues at Castlerobin, County Antrim, Styles was called to defuse a similar bomb left in a telephone booth in the bar of the oft-bombed Europa Hotel in Belfast, the main hotel used by journalists posted to Northern Ireland to report on the Troubles.

Promoted to major on 16 March 1962, he was posted to Northern Ireland in 1969. In 1971, he was a major in the RAOC, serving as deputy assistant director of ordnance services and senior ammunition technical officer in Northern Ireland and commanding the Explosive Ordnance and Disposal Team.

Styles married Mary Rose Woolgar in 1952; the couple had a son and two daughters. He enjoyed rifle and game shooting, and collected rare cartridges.

On 31 December 1948, Styles received a short-service commission in the RAOC. He was granted a regular commission on 18 May 1949 and was retroactively promoted to lieutenant with effect from 16 March; he was subsequently seconded to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry He served with the 1st Battalion as a temporary captain in the Malayan Emergency and was mentioned in dispatches. Promoted to the substantive rank of captain on 5 May 1955, he studied at the Royal Military College of Science, obtaining an engineering degree. He returned to Malaya, commanding the 28th Commonwealth Brigade Ordnance Field Park Regiment, based at Taiping, then served with the 1st British Corps of the British Army of the Rhine in Germany.

Styles was born in Crawley, where his father was a bricklayer. He was educated at Collyers Grammar School, Horsham (aka College of Richard Collyer). He was called for national service in 1946, and, after officer cadet training, received an emergency commission as a second lieutenant and was posted to the central ammunition depot at Kineton.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen George Styles, GC (16 March 1928 – 1 August 2006), usually known as George Styles, was a British Army officer and a bomb disposal expert in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC). He received the George Cross for his service in defusing terrorist bombs in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.