page_title: John Wilton (general)
section_title: Rise to senior command
hierarchical_section_title: John Wilton (general) / Post-war career / Rise to senior command
caption_attribution_description: AWM caption&#160;: Korea. Senior Australian Army Officers in Korea 1953. Left to right: Lieutenant Colonel A.I. Macdonald, CO 3RAR; (Subsequently General Sir Arthur Leslie MacDonald, KBE, CB) Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Rowell, CGS; Brigadier J.G.N. Wilton, Commander, 28th British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade; (Subsequently General Sir John Wilton, KBE, CB, DSO) Lieutenant General H. Wells, Commander-In-Chief BCF Korea; Lieutenant Colonel G.F. Larkin, C.O. 2RAR.
context_page_description: General Sir John Gordon Noel Wilton, KBE, CB, DSO was a senior commander in the Australian Army. He served as Chief of the General Staff, the Army's professional head, from 1963 until 1966, and as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, forerunner of the role of Australia's Chief of the Defence Force, from 1966 until 1970. His eight-year tenure as senior officer of first the Army and then the Australian military spanned almost the entire period of the nation's involvement in the Vietnam War.
  Born in Sydney, Wilton entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1927. Owing to lack of opportunity in the Australian military at the time, he took a commission in the British Army following his graduation in 1930. He spent most of the remainder of the decade with the Royal Artillery in India. Wilton returned to Australia on the eve of World War II and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Artillery. He saw action with the 7th Division in Syria and the 3rd Division in New Guinea, earning a mention in despatches in the former campaign and the Distinguished Service Order in the latter.
context_section_description: Wilton was still only a substantive captain at the end of hostilities, but was considered by the Military Board to be among those "promising officers who have forced their way to the top during the war" and hence to deserve retention of their wartime rank. He became Deputy Director of Military Operations and Plans at Army Headquarters (AHQ), Melbourne, in March 1946; receiving promotion to substantive lieutenant-colonel on 30 September 1946, he took charge of the same directorate the following year. Promoted substantive colonel on 11 April 1950, that year he was appointed a member of the Bridgeford Mission, which advised the Australian government on the state of the Malayan Emergency. On a visit to Singapore in February–March 1951 as part of a joint planning team, he urged his British counterparts to maintain their presence in Malaya as the basis of a combined force, without which Australia would be reluctant to commit any troops for the region's security.  Wilton relinquished his post at AHQ in November 1951, and attended the Imperial Defence College in London during 1952. Having been assigned a combat command in the Korean War, he was promoted to brigadier on 13 March 1953, arrived in Seoul within the week, and took over the 28th Commonwealth Brigade from fellow Duntroon graduate Brigadier Thomas Daly on 25 March.
  The 28th was described in the official history of Australia's involvement in the Korean War as "the most nationally diverse" brigade in the 1st Commonwealth Division, consisting of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand units, yet also "an outstandingly well-knit formation". After operating on the eastern side of the Jamestown Line from April, the 28th was transferred westward to relieve the 29th Brigade at the Hook, the Commonwealth Division's most vulnerable position, on 9–10 July. At 6:15pm on 23 July, Wilton informed his battalion chiefs that an armistice was ready to be signed, and to keep patrols to the minimum level necessary for the line's security. The brigade's last action took place over the next three days, when it used artillery, mortar, machine-gun and rifle fire to repulse a heavy assault by Chinese troops, inflicting as many as 3,000 casualties. Wilton later recalled the "terrible and gruesome sight" of no-man's land "literally carpeted with dead bodies". He was present for the armistice ceremony at Panmunjom on 27 July. Having succeeded in maintaining his command's discipline and morale during a potentially problematic time at the end of the conflict and the beginning of peace, he handed over the 28th to Brigadier Ian Murdoch on 19 February 1954. For his service in Korea, Wilton was raised to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours on 10 June 1954.  He was also awarded the US Legion of Merit for his "outstanding leadership and initiative"; the decoration was gazetted on 1 May 1956.
  After returning to Australia, Wilton was appointed Brigadier in Charge of Administration at Headquarters Eastern Command, his first administrative post. In November 1955 he was assigned to the General Staff at AHQ, where he was responsible for intelligence, operations and plans, and took part in Australian preparations for SEATO exercises. He was promoted to major general on 24 March 1957, and became Commandant of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Although not strongly religious, Wilton considered himself responsible for the spiritual and moral development of younger cadets; he made a point of attending church parade regularly, and in 1959 personally launched an appeal for public funds to build the college's Anzac Memorial Chapel, which would open in 1966. His chief goal, though, was academic: concerned that graduates were at risk of falling behind their increasingly tertiary-qualified peers in industry and public service, he worked assiduously to make the college a degree-granting institution; this was realised in 1967. From June 1960 through 1962, Wilton was Chief of the Military Planning Office at SEATO Headquarters, Bangkok. He believed Thailand to be strategi
caption: Brigadier Wilton (centre) commanding the 28th Commonwealth Brigade in Korea, flanked by Lieutenant Generals Sir Sydney Rowell (second left) and Henry Wells (second right), in 1953
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