Former senior officer in the Abu Dhabi Defence Force, Lt Colonel Mark Legg, has died aged 89

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Legg first came to the Middle East in 1962, commanding a company in the Sultan of Oman’s Northern Frontier Regiment for three years.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Legg, a former senior officer in the Abu Dhabi Defence Force who later served for a decade as deputy director of the Royal Stables in Abu Dhabi, died last month in the UK aged 89.

Legg, who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, DFC, in 1958 while flying with the British Army Air Corps in Malaysia, first came to the Middle East in 1962, commanding a company in the Sultan of Oman’s Northern Frontier Regiment for three years.

Returning to Britain in 1965, he found life as a farmer unsatisfying and came back to Arabia in 1967 to fly light aircraft for the South Arabian Air Force, in what is now the southern part of Yemen. Following British withdrawal at the end of 1967, he joined the Abu Dhabi Defence Force the following year, commanding its flight of Islander aircraft.

At the time, on the directions of the late Sheikh Zayed, the ADDF, formed in 1965, was being rapidly expanded to prepare for the establishment of the UAE in 1971, and Legg, supported by the ADDF’s commander, Colonel EB ‘Tug’ Wilson, had the task of developing this part of its air wing.

He performed this role for 10 years, through the unification of the UAE Armed Forces in 1976, before eventually retiring in 1978 in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

By that stage, Tug Wilson had also retired, and had been given by Sheikh Zayed the post of director of the Royal Stables, in charge of developing its fine collection of Arabian horses.

Legg was persuaded to take on the role of Tug’s deputy and stayed on in Abu Dhabi for a further 10 years. His second wife, Jean, whom he had married in 1972, served for many years as personal assistant to the British Ambassador.

The couple were popular members of Abu Dhabi’s British expatriate community, with invitations to their home in the Royal Stables being much valued, but both maintained their close relationships with their Emirati friends, who included many leading government figures. They returned to Britain in 1978.

Born in 1926, Legg joined the British armed forces in 1943, serving in Kenya, Palestine and Korea before being posted to Malaysia in 1956. He retired from the British Army in 1961.