Walker was commissioned into the
Sherwood Foresters in 1952, where he served for a short period before being transferred to the
Intelligence Corps, from there he joined
22 Special Air Service Regiment as a
Troop Commander. Early in his career he made his name as an Army Officers Boxing Champion and an expert parachutist.
The Oman Campaign The kingdom of
Muscat and Oman had been a British Protectorate since 1891 and by the 1950s was ruled by Sultan
Said bin Taimur, who by the late 1950s was facing serious opposition and uprisings from the
imam of Oman. Britain helped Taimur to suppress the
imam's first revolt in 1955, however this caused resentment from
Saudi Arabia and
Egypt who then backed the imam's second revolt. The iman's brother Talib recruited and trained a force of around 500 Omanis and started a second revolt in May 1957. British forces, at the Sultan's request, responded and suppressed the revolt, but the leaders fled to the
Jebel Akhdar (The Green Mountain) and continued to launch intermittent attacks from their safe vantage point. Despite numerous attempts, and nervous about international attention, the British were unable to stop the attacks. Eventually, in November 1958, the British sent D Squadron 22 SAS under the command of Major
John Watts from
Malaysia to conduct a recce of the mountain. Watts was accompanied by his second in command, Captain Walker. On 27 December 1958, Walker gained a lodgment on the north side of the Jebel and climbed a rope which they had fixed to the rock face. Steadying himself in a cleft in the rock, Walker pulled the pin from a grenade and hurled it over the lip above him. It killed one of the enemy and scattered the rest. Walker and his men then reached the plateau and by dawn they had killed another eight. Walker was later awarded the
Military Cross for his bravery.
The Indonesian Confrontation By the 1960s, Walker, by then a Major had been assigned to serve under
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Becke as a member of the two-man
Military Attaché at the
British Embassy in Djakarta, Indonesia. During his posting the
Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation began, when Britain as part of the dismantling of the Empire in Southeast Asia, proposed to combine its colonies on Borneo with the Federation of Malaya to form a new country called Malaysia. The move was opposed by neighbouring country of Indonesia, who believed that it was a ploy to increase British control over the region and would eventually threaten their independence. On 16 September 1963, an organised mob of several thousand demonstrators formed in the city of Djakarta, they sacked the Malaysian Embassy before marching on the British Embassy where Becke and Walker were on guard, they tore down the Union Jack and burnt the Ambassadors car, then threw stones and pieces of concrete through the fence breaking all the embassy windows. In what is now a legendary act Walker strode up and down in front of the building, dodging the missiles and relentlessly playing his
bagpipes despite pleas from the police and the leader of the demonstrators, eventually the mob broke up and the battle was won. ==Personal life==