Major-General Alastair Duncan Dies

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Major-General Alastair Duncan CBE DSO, aged 63. 

The Managing Director of the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC) between 2005 and 2009, the not-for-profit organisation that runs BFBS Radio and Forces TV, we send our condolences to his family. 

A commander of British Forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkans conflict and Chief of Staff for the UN mission in Sierra Leone, Alastair Duncan had joined the Army in 1973.

Commissioned into what was then known as the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, now amalgamated into 2nd Battalion (2Yorks), he rose to become its commander by 1990.

A six-month tour of Northern Ireland in 1992 with the regiment saw him appointed an OBE.

In Bosnia in 1993 he became the only officer since the Second World War to be awarded a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) while still in command. Bestowed in recognition of his leadership in a peacekeeping mission that saw 14 of his men wounded and him ordering the return of fire on 69 occasions.

It was in the Balkans that Major-General Duncan was himself injured, sustaining a head trauma when the Warrior armoured vehicle in which he was travelling was damaged by a roadside bomb.

The repercussions of incident were to stay with him until the end of his life - suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), exacerbated after he was prescribed the anti-malarial drug Lariam while serving in West Africa in 2000. 

Maj Gen Duncan ended his military career in 2005 as director-general of Training Support Command after being offered the civilian role of Managing Director of SSVC. 

He passed away on 24th July from complications caused by a perforated ulcer.