Lord Bramall, 91, had his home searched by the police after an unspecified allegation of a sexual nature was made against him

At 9am last Wednesday, 91-year-old Field Marshal Lord Bramall was having breakfast at his home in Hampshire when there was a knock at his kitchen door.

Two police officers, a man and a woman, asked to talk to him. He showed them in, heard what they had to say, and became unwilling party to a nightmare.

An unspecified allegation of a sexual nature had been made against him, said the officers, dating back to the Seventies and involving a minor. They had a warrant to search his house.

Some 20 officers in white overalls entered and spent the next ten hours examining every corner and crevice.

They finally left at 7pm, taking with them an old visitors’ book and copies of two speeches Lord Bramall had made, one to Sandhurst cadets and another about a fellow Army commander.

Since that ghastly day — and how could such an experience be other than ghastly for any of us — he has heard not another word from the police, who are presumably still examining whatever evidence they believe they have against the old soldier.

During their protracted visit, he quizzed them about what time of his life the inquiry related to. In the Seventies, he was successively commanding troops in Germany and Hong Kong.

He asked the police: was his accuser German or Chinese? No, they said. Was he a former soldier? No, they said. So, what could they tell him about what had prompted this invasion of his home?

Nothing, said the officers, except that an allegation had been made to them last October from someone who had been under 16 at the time of Lord Bramall’s supposed assault on him.

‘Dwin’ Bramall — as he is known — said to me yesterday: ‘I’m completely baffled. I’ve racked my brains to think of anything out of the past that might have led to this, and I can’t. I’ve been married for 65 years, and I’ve never had the slightest thought of having any sort of relations with my own sex, far less done anything about it.’

Later he told the BBC: ‘Categorically, never have I had a connection or anything to do with the matters being investigated. It is not in my character or my psyche.’ I have known, liked and deeply respected ‘Dwin’ Bramall for more than 40 years.

I will here stick my neck out and say I cannot imagine him doing anything that might conceivably have justified the police descent on the home of one of Britain’s most distinguished soldiers and his wife, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

BBC DJ Paul Gambaccini spent a year on police bail before being told there was no evidence to justify a prosecution

On Saturday, the Mail reported the experience of BBC DJ Paul Gambaccini, who spent a year on police bail (following claims of sexual abuse) during which time his BBC salary was stopped, before being told there was no evidence to justify a prosecution — a weasel form of words, if ever there was one.

I do not know Gambaccini, but I do know Bramall. It is hard to describe the anger that I, and many others of his acquaintance, feel towards the police for bringing their almost crazed witch-hunt to the door of such a man.

Let me tell you about him. He joined the Army in 1943 and spent almost a year as a private soldier before being commissioned. He landed in Normandy with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps 24 hours after D-Day, was wounded near Caen in July, rejoined his battalion in time to win a Military Cross in Holland and then fought through to the end of the war in Germany.

Thereafter, he rose through the ranks to become head of the Army at the time of the Falklands War, then Chief of Defence Staff. Beyond being clever, I have always found him disarmingly honest and witty about himself, the Army and the many things he has done since he retired.

Lord Bramall, pictured with Margaret Thatcher, rose through the ranks to become head of the Army at the time of the Falklands War

There may be cynics who read this and say: ‘This is all very nice, but what has it got to do with the fact he may have had sexual relations with a minor in the Seventies?’

Only this: that neither I nor those I know who served with him can for a moment conceive that a man of Lord Bramall’s character, record and integrity could have concealed a huge guilty secret for half a lifetime.

I can as readily imagine such a vile accusation being made against myself, because some malicious informant wished ill to my reputation, home and family, which is why Lord Bramall’s fate seems so frightening.

None of us doubt the guilt of Jimmy Savile, whose wickedness started all this. The convictions of Rolf Harris, Max Clifford and Gary Glitter seem absolutely proper. But in the course of hunting down and bringing to justice those old men who exploited their fame to do monstrous things to children, we have all become party to a witch-hunt, which flies in the face of every principle of British decency and natural justice.

I remember dear old Lord Deedes, my predecessor as editor of the Daily Telegraph, saying sadly 20 years ago: ‘Once upon a time, if the police called in someone for questioning about a serious crime, nothing would be heard about it publicly unless they were charged. Today, the questioning is all over the front pages next morning.’

The police, whom once we respected deeply, have lately been found guilty of many betrayals, but their handling of the Operation Yewtree inquiry into historical sex charges seems one of the most egregious. A senior officer recently appealed to victims to come forward and made the wildly improper pledge that they would ‘be believed’.

While too many young people did suffer dreadful things at the hands of Savile, Glitter and their kind, we must never forget that accusations of all kinds are routinely made against prominent figures by unhinged or malicious people.

The consequences for the innocent are so grave the police should think much harder than they do before launching mob-handed assaults.

I always thought Leon Brittan, who died earlier this year, a strange and rather unlovable human being.

Some 20 officers in white overalls entered the home of Lord Bramall and spent the next ten hours examining every corner and crevice

But never for a moment could I, and many others who knew him, imagine the former Tory Home Secretary guilty of a sex crime, such as, last year, he was publicly accused of, and which must have haunted the last months of his life.

Do the policemen conducting these investigations — the sort of men who found it necessary in the case of Paul Gambaccini to fly half-way around the world at public expense to seek evidence — consider their duty to be to protect the innocent, as well as to convict the guilty?

‘Dwin’ Bramall told me that, after racking his brains about how he could have become the victim of last week’s raid, he concluded that the only tenuous link was a slight acquaintance with Sir Peter Hayman, a senior diplomat, who was named and shamed as a paedophile in 1981.

The name of Hayman (who died in 1992) features once or twice in Bramall’s visitors’ book, when both men were serving in Germany in the Seventies.

The old Field Marshal ponders: ‘Why should anyone have waited 40 years to make an allegation against me? It’s lucky I’m a robust sort of chap or this experience would not have done much for my health.’

All those who know him are convinced he is innocent of the smallest impropriety. We feel appalled that a man who has given a lifetime’s service to Britain in peace and war should be treated as he has been by the police, in their ill-judged determination not to ‘shield Establishment figures’.

What sort of Britain have we created that such things can happen?

I am completing a book about spies and secret war, in which I have written much about Stalin’s Russia: a terror universe of anonymous denunciations, imprisonments without trial, executions without appeal.

It seems almost incredible that in 21st-century Britain, a man or woman’s reputation can be destroyed without trial by unnamed informers.

Even if the police do to Lord Bramall as they have done to Gambaccini — mutter a few months on that there’s insufficient evidence — they will have smeared the reputation of a remarkable Englishman.