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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 May 2017
When Templer's proconsulship in Malaya was coming to an end, the Colonial Office and War Office made arrangements for his succession, and it was proposed that he should remain in Malaya until the end of May 1954 when the Deputy High Commissioner, Sir Donald MacGillivray, would take over from him. As MacGillivray was a career colonial civil servant and not a soldier, Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey Bourne would take over as Director of Operations.
It was then planned that Templer would take leave until he assumed in October 1954 his new appointment in Germany as Commander of the Northern Army Group, Allied Forces, Western Europe, a post combined with that of Commander-in-Chief of the 80,000-strong British Army of the Rhine, one of the most important appointments in the British Army.
When the time came for his departure from Malaya on 1 June 1954, Templer was given a grand send-off at Kuala Lumpur International Airport befitting his high position, cheered by thousands of spectators and farewelled officially by a wide array of Malayan dignitaries, including MacGillivray, members of the Federal Executive and Legislative Councils, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Colonel H.S. Lee, Dato' Onn bin Ja'afar, as well as the Malay Sultans or their representatives, service and police chiefs, and high-ranking civil servants. General Templer, resplendent in his white tropical General's full-dress uniform and wearing all his decorations and the coloured sash of the GCMG, inspected the four guards of honour from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Police that had been drawn up on the tarmac of the airfield. The RAF Band played the Royal Salute followed by Auld Lang Syne. It was a most poignant and moving occasion and according to the Malay Mail, Lady Templer was in tears and Templer was visibly affected too, when they boarded the VIP aircraft that was to take them to Singapore on the first stage of their journey home.
Everybody assumed, as had been announced, that Templer was on his way to take up what was one of the top appointments in the British Army, and only Templer himself and a very few sworn confidantes knew that his appointment had in fact been cancelled.
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