Walter Cawthorn

Major General Sir Walter Joseph Cawthorn, CB, CIE, CBE (11 June 1896 – 4 December 1970) was an Australian soldier and diplomat, commonly known as a former head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).^[1][2]

Early life

Walter Joseph Cawthorn was born in the suburb of Prahran, on 11 June 1896, the second child of an English commercial traveller, William Cawthorn, and his wife, Fanny Adelaide, née Williams. He was educated at Melbourne High School, and became a schoolteacher, along with his younger sister, Minnie Elizabeth Cawthorn.^[1]

Military career

Cawthorn enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), following the start of the First World War, and served as a regimental sergeant major at Gallipoli, and was later commissioned into the AIF and served in France and Belgium.^[1] He was commissioned a lieutenant and appointed to the Indian Army 25 March 1918.^[3] He served with the 46th Punjabis in Palestine September to October 1918 and was Mentioned in Despatches in the London Gazette 12 January 1920. He joined the 4th Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment on 25 September 1925 and attended the Camberley Staff College in 1929–30.^[4]

He married Mary Wyman Varley in 1927 in London and they had one son, Michael John Douglas Cawthorn, who was born 10 March 1930.^[1] His son Michael would later attend the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on 16 December 1949. However, he was killed serving in Korea on 4 April 1951 with the 1st Battalion.^[5][6] Cawthorn was appointed a company commander in the 4th Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment on 1 May 1930 and served on the North West Frontier that year.^[7]

Cawthorn served on the Staff of Baluchistan District as a General Staff Officer 3rd grade (GSO 3) from 15 December 1930 to 29 February 1932.^[8] He was appointed Deputy Assistant Quarter Master General (DAQMG) on the Staff of Western Command at Quetta 1 March 1932 to 20 January 1935.^[9] He served on the Mohmand operations on the North West Frontier in 1935.^[10] He was appointed a General Staff Officer 2nd grade (GSO 2) at the War Office in London from 6 January 1937 to 2 August 1939. On 3 August 1939 he was appointed a local colonel and temporary General Staff Officer 1st grade (GSO 1).^[11]

Cawthorn took charge of the Middle East Intelligence Centre, at the start of the Second World War, and later became the Director of Military Intelligence at the General Headquarters, in India on 15 August 1941.^[12] He was appointed a temporary major general on 21 November 1943.^[13] At Partition in 1947 he opted for the Pakistan Army and from 1948 to 1951 he was Deputy Chief General Staff, Pakistan Army under Lieutenant General Ross C. McCay. In this capacity he was given the task by the government of organizing the infrastructure of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He selected Colonel Shahid Hamid to set up this new formation and command it. Cawthorn left Pakistan in 1951.

Intelligence career and later life

From 1951 to 1954, Cawthorn was the Director of the Australian Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), within the Defence ministry. He came back to Pakistan in 1954 as Australia's High Commissioner to Pakistan. He was knighted in 1958, and in 1959 appointed as High Commissioner of Canada until September 1960, when he was brought back to head the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) until 1968.^[1][2] Cawthorn died in Melbourne in 1970, at the age of 74.^[1]

References