General Sir Frank Edward Kitson, GBE, KCB, MC & Bar, DL (15 December 1926 – 2 January 2024) was a British Army officer and writer on military subjects, notably low intensity operations.
The QUEEN has been graciously pleased to approve the following awards in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Malaya for the period 31st August to 31st December, 1957:— Bar to the Military Cross.
By his devotion to duty he attained the virtual elimination of two communist party branches in a difficult area.Kitson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1959 Birthday Honours.
[15] According to Belfast politician Paddy Devlin, Kitson "probably did more than any other individual to sour relations between the Catholic community and the security forces" in Northern Ireland.
[22] On 17 March 1980, he was appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief UK Land Forces and Inspector General Territorial Army, with substantive promotion to lieutenant-general (and seniority backdated to 17 August 1979).
[25] As is traditional for senior officers of the British Army, Kitson held a number of more honorary positions: Colonel Commandant of 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets from 1 January 1979 to 1 January 1987;[26][27] Honorary Colonel to the University of Oxford Officer Training Corps from 21 July 1982 to 21 July 1987;[28][29] and Aide-de-Camp General to the Queen from 14 February 1983 to 1985.
[14] On 27 April 2015, Kitson and the Ministry of Defence were sued for negligence and misfeasance in office by Mary Heenan, the widow of Northern Irish foreman Eugene "Paddy" Heenan, who was killed, with three other men, when a hand grenade was thrown into a vehicle carrying 15 workers to a Catholic school building site in Gilnahirk in loyalist East Belfast in 1973 by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
The lawsuit claimed that Kitson was "liable personally for negligence and misfeasance in public office" due to the fact that he was supposedly "reckless as to whether state agents would be involved in murder".