Educated at
Shrewsbury School, the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and
King's College, Cambridge, William Jackson was
commissioned into the
Royal Engineers in August 1937. He served with the
British Army in the
Norwegian campaign during the
Second World War, which began in September 1939, where he was one of the first British officers to engage the enemy. His work in blowing up bridges as the British retreated from
Lillehammer earned Jackson his first
Military Cross (MC). He also served in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during the war. He was twice injured by a land mine. The one at
Bou Arada in Tunisia placed him in bed for four months before he joined General
Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters, where the
Allied invasion of Sicily was being planned. and by the end of the war Jackson was in post as an acting major but was only formally promoted captain in August 1945, having been promoted to lieutenant in 1940. He was also
mentioned in despatches in 1945 for his services in Italy. After the war he became a general
staff officer at Headquarters Allied Land Forces, South East Asia in 1945 before moving on to be an instructor at the
Staff College, Camberley in 1948. Promoted major in 1950, he was an instructor at the
Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst from 1951. and was appointed Assistant Adjutant & Quartermaster General (Plans) at the
War Office during the
Suez Crisis in 1956. In 1958 he was promoted lieutenant colonel and became
Commander, Gurkha Engineers in Malaya. and in 1961 returned to the
Staff College, Camberley as Colonel General Staff at the Minley Division. He went on to be Director of the
Chief of Defence Staff's Unison Planning Staff in 1966 in the temporary rank of major-general (his rank of major-general was confirmed as permanent in July 1966) and
Assistant Chief of the General Staff (Operational Requirements) at the
Ministry of Defence in 1968. He was knighted as a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1971, and in 1973 he became
Quartermaster-General to the Forces with formal promotion to general coming four months later. Advanced to
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 Birthday Honours, Jackson retired from active army service in February 1977, taking a post of Military Historian at the
Cabinet Office from 1977 to 1978 and then becoming
Governor and Commander-in-Chief of
Gibraltar, overseeing the colony's transition to a
British dependent territory and where he was a stalwart advocate for self-determination in the territory. He was appointed as Knight of the
Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1978. Jackson retired from his post in Gibraltar in 1982 (having had his tenure extended by a year) and returned to being historian at the Cabinet Office until 1987. and Colonel of the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. ==Works==