The authoritatively calm leadership that was Mike Hicks’s special characteristic was never more apparent than in Londonderry on “Bloody Sunday”. His battalion, 1st Coldstream Guards, was responsible for containing the route of civil rights protesters as they advanced to the point where 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment (1 Para) had been ordered to identify and “snatch” the ringleaders of those throwing rocks and stones.

His guardsmen stood firm and resolute despite verbal abuse and stone throwing. Afterwards, when the media tried to draw him on the contrast of conduct between his troops and those of 1 Para, he dispassionately pointed out that the tasks allocated were quite different, while each battalion faced a difficult challenge. He was a man of impeccable good manners and impressed on his subordinates the importance of remaining calm in the face of intense provocation. When a sniper’s round passed between him and his press relations officer, Captain (later General Sir) Michael Rose, he broke neither his step nor quiet conversation.

An earlier tour of duty in the winter of 1970-71 had also involved his battalion in operations in Londonderry, so he knew the city’s atmosphere well. Encountering a mob attacking two RUC officers, he ordered his Land Rover driver to head straight into it with horn blaring, distracting the attackers and allowing him to lift the policemen to safety.

When a delegation of Catholic women came to complain of a security measure he had imposed, he addressed their leader as “madam” and quietly explained the rationale behind the steps taken. As the delegation left, one woman was heard to complain: “The trouble with these English, they’re too damned civilised.”

William Michael Ellis Hicks was the son of Group-Captain W. C. Hicks. He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst, where he was awarded the King’s Medal on passing out at the top of the order of merit. He had made his mark at the academy in two ways: first by asking questions others hesitated to raise for fear of revealing their lack of comprehension; second, and more remarkably, on the rugby field, leaving him with an injury that dogged him for the whole of his military career, even casting doubt on his fitness for battalion command, at which he in fact was to prove so adept and resourceful.

His early service was with 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards in Tripoli and Egypt. His company was detached to the 2nd Battalion for the Suez operation in 1956 but in the event was not deployed. Entering the Staff College, Camberley, at his first attempt in 1958, he again came to attention for his forthright manner of questioning, including of some accepted shibboleths left over from a previous era.

His performance at Camberley led to recall as an instructor in 1963 after a staff appointment in Germany; commanding No 1 Company 1st Coldstream Guards in Windsor and taking it as a reinforcement to the 2nd Battalion in Kenya. He also attended a course at the Joint Services Staff College. Selected for promotion to lieutenant-colonel in 1967, he was posted to the Military Operations Directorate in the MoD as “chairman” of MO 1. This select group of outstanding young majors was responsible for devilling information and preparing briefs for the Chief of the General Staff. It was a swiftly moving scene with demands on the team invariably accumulating more quickly than they could be dealt with. Hicks was well suited to preside over this work and was appointed OBE before leaving.

Immediately after completing his battalion command in 1972, he was notified of his selection to attend the following year’s course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. Although not without precedent, this was an earlier than customary career development even for the more promising officers, as the course was designed for brigadiers and their equivalent in the other services. He was promoted to colonel for the course but, more significantly, for command of the 4th Guards Armoured Brigade with the British Army of the Rhine in January 1974.

The Cold War was still at its height and a successful deterrent capability in the Nato Central Region of Europe remained one of the four pillars of British defence policy. Aside from keeping his units up to a high pitch of operational readiness, Hicks had another problem to handle. The Guards Brigade included young officers of high spirits and independent means who might kick over the traces in a manner unlikely to be greeted with enthusiasm by his very serious-minded Divisional Commander. That he was able to keep these potentially conflicting factors in play without upset says much for his diplomatic skill.

The two years after leaving Germany saw a serious recurrence of the pain and difficulties left by the Sandhurst rugby injury. He eventually overcame this following an operation and regained full physical fitness in time to become the General Officer Commanding North West District in Preston. Before that, however, he served as the brigadier in charge of training at HQ UK Land Forces based at Wilton, Wiltshire, and then as the official author of the Northern Ireland campaign up to 1979.

When giving evidence to the Saville “Bloody Sunday” inquiry, he stated he had not judged it necessary to post a man on a certain lookout position. Discovering by chance at a regimental reunion some weeks later that he had placed a man there, he returned to the inquiry to correct his evidence, remarking how easy it was to be mistaken 27 years after the event.

After two years in the North West, traditionally strongly supportive of the Armed Forces, he was appointed CB and retired from the Army to become the Secretary of the Royal College of Defence Studies from 1983 to 1993. He was president of his local branch of the British Legion and chairman of the local Conservative Party.

Under age to receive marriage allowance, he married Jean Duncan in 1950. As she was not entitled to passage by troop ship, he drove her in his Standard 10 to Marseilles and then from Tunis to join his battalion at Tripoli. She survives him with three sons, one of whom followed him into the Coldstream Guards.

Major-General W. M. E. Hicks, CB, OBE, GOC North-West District 1980-83, was born on June 2, 1928. He died on December 27, 2008, aged 80