Prince John-Nicholas Ghika-Comanesti (1928-2003)

Brigadier Prince John Ghika CBE born 27 July 1928 Paris; Gilling Castle
1936- St Oswald's House left 1946; Worcester College, Oxford 1946-49; army
1949-81 - Irish Guards; Commandant of the Guards Depot 1969-74; Regimental
Lieutenant Colonel, Irish Guards 1974-77; Chief of Staff, London District
1977-81; CBE 1981; Comptroller at the Union Jack Club 1981 onwards; married
Judy Davidson-Smith 1968 (2 children); died 2 August 2003


Obituary
(reprinted with kind permission from The Daily Telegraph 18 September 2003)

Brigadier Prince John Ghika, who has died aged 75, had the unusual
distinction of reaching high rank in the British Army despite being
registered as an enemy alien during the Second World War.
John Ghika was born of Romanian parents on July 27 1928 in Paris, where his
father was studying for a career in the Law. The Ghika family ruled over
Moldavia from 1658 until the new Hohenzollern monarchy united the Romanian
provinces in 1859; but the family retained its lands and title thereafter.
[a historical error, but it can be ignored in this context - n.n.]

Ghika was brought up by an English nanny with whom he shared the first eight
years of his life. English became his first language and he was encouraged
to regard himself as English - a providential notion, as things turned out.
His early years were spent between France and Romania. For a small boy,
cooped up in a compartment for three days and two nights, the Orient Express
held little of the exotic reputation that it was to acquire. In Moldavia, he
stayed with his father's family in a large house arrayed with stuffed
trophies of shooting expeditions in Africa and Canada, or with his mother's
parents in a house in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps [Posada -n.n.]
and a Venetian-style palazzo near Bucharest [palais brancovanesque de
Mogosoka -n.n.]. In 1936, aged eight, he was sent to school in England,
where he discovered to his chagrin that his nursery pretensions to be an
Englishman did not stand up to the scrutiny of the boys at Gilling Castle, a
large boarding school in North Yorkshire. Summer holidays were spent in
Romania, but the clouds of war were gathering and, as he travelled through
Germany, passing trains were crammed with Brownshirts with swastika
brassards on their uniforms; and the towns were festooned with Nazi flags
hanging from balconies.

In September 1939, two weeks after the outbreak of war, Ghika left Bucharest
for Athens in a private aeroplane belonging to his grandfather [Prince
George III Valentin Bibescu -n.n.], who was President of the International
Aeronautical Federation and who had been taught to fly by Bliriot. He then
boarded an Imperial Airways flying boat at Piraeus and flew to Poole,
Dorset, perched on a seat rigged up in the luggage hold. A monk, bound like
himself for Ampleforth, was carrying a diplomatic bag from the Legation for
delivery to the Foreign Office in London and, Ghika remembered, travelled in
somewhat greater comfort.
Ghika spent the years of the war at Ampleforth and was cut off from his
family for the whole of this period. After Romania came into the war on the
side of the Axis powers, correspondence became difficult and letters were
routed through Switzerland using a go-between. In 1944, at the age of 16,
Ghika had his photograph taken and was escorted by the village policeman to
be registered. On being asked to confirm his status, he replied, "Enemy
Alien"; the policeman rejoined: "Aye, and don't you forget it lad!" Although
Ghika was exempted from the more stringent restrictions, any movement from
his registered address had to be reported to the police until he became a
British subject in 1948.
In 1946, Ghika went up to Worcester College, Oxford, to read Classics. He
was then commissioned into the Irish Guards, initially as a National Service
officer and subsequently with a Regular Commission. He served as a company
commander with the 1st Battalion in Cyprus in 1958 before attending Staff
College.

After a spell at HQ 4 Guards Brigade as Deputy Assistant Adjutant and
Quartermaster General, in 1966 he accompanied the 1st Battalion to Aden as a
company commander. The battalion was involved in sporadic counter-insurgency
operations and at the turn of the year his company, stationed on its own at
Dhala, came under heavy attack from rockets and machine guns. He was
subsequently presented with the tail fin of a rocket which had narrowly
missed him in the first few minutes of 1967. Ghika was appointed commandant
of the Guards Depot in 1969 and Regimental Lieutenant Colonel, Irish Guards,
in 1974. His last four years in the Army were spent as Chief of Staff,
London District.

In 1978, in a curious twist of fate, when the Ceausescus paid a state visit
to Britain, Ghika, as the commander of the troops on parade, was mounted on
his horse outside the entrance to Buckingham Palace awaiting their arrival.
The programme for the visit was discussed in some detail at a Lord
Chamberlain's conference attended by Ghika. Madame Ceausescu was fond of
jewellery, and one of the items on her agenda was a visit to Cartier, in
Bond Street.
Ghika retired from the Army in 1981 and took up an appointment as
Comptroller at the Union Jack Club, near Waterloo station. Membership levels
were raised and the accommodation and other services offered by the club
were modernised. He was chairman of the West Sussex Branch of the Army
Benevolent Fund and of the executive council of the Ex-Services Fellowship
Centres for almost 10 years, as well as taking an active part in other
charities.


Ghika's parents were arrested by the Communist secret police in 1949. Their
possessions were confiscated and they spent the next seven years living in
one room under house arrest. Ghika's grandmother, Princess Marthe Bibesco,
the writer, worked tirelessly to obtain their release and, with the help of
the British Red Cross, Ghika was reunited with his family at London Airport
in 1956 after a separation of 17 years.


A man of great charm with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Ghika was also
a devout Roman Catholic, and greatly sustained by his faith. In retirement
in Sussex, he re-taught himself Romanian and took a leading part in raising
funds for the medical centre at Cormanic [Comarnic - n.n.], a village [town,
ville -n.n.] near his family home [Posada] in Romania. John Ghika, who died
on August 2, was appointed CBE in 1981. He married, in 1968, Judy
Davidson-Smith, who survives him, together with a son and a daughter.