Major-General Guy Watkins, who has died aged 92, reached high rank in the Army after recovering from a potentially devastating setback, and despite his evident preference for life in the horse-racing world.

At a critical point midway through Watkins’s Army service, a decision was taken by a senior officer that threatened to ruin him. In a desperate situation, Watkins had to resort to an extraordinary stratagem to rescue his career.

Guy Hansard Watkins was born in Peshawar, India (now Pakistan), on November 30 1933. His father, Colonel Norman Watkins, had served in France in the First World War, initially with the York and Lancaster Regiment and then with the newly formed Machine Gun Corps. In the Second World War, Norman Watkins served with the British Indian Army on operations in Burma.

Guy’s grandfather had also been in the Army and his great-grandfather had been killed in the Mahdist War in the Sudan as a Volunteer Officer. There was, therefore, an expectation that Guy would also be a soldier. It was an expectation he did his best to discourage, however, for his ambition was to be a racehorse trainer.

In May 1935 he was no more than an infant when there was a large earthquake at Quetta on the North-Western Frontier (now in Pakistan), and much of the city was destroyed. His home was reduced to rubble, but his cot was shielded by a collapsed roof beam.

In 1946, Guy returned to England with his mother and sister, but his father remained in India for a further year to help with the transition to Independence. After King’s School, Canterbury, with his mother’s help he was offered an internship with a racehorse trainer in the New Forest, but his father heard of it and refused the offer on his son’s behalf.

Instead, Watkins went to RMA Sandhurst. He passed out as a Junior Under Officer in July 1953 and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery. After completing a parachute course, he was posted to 22 LAA Regiment RA, stationed in West Germany. He commanded a troop comprising about 50 soldiers and equipped with six anti-aircraft guns. The regiment had a strong riding tradition, which Watkins relished.

Some of his fellow troop leaders had distinguished records on active service, and Watkins did his best to follow their example. But the adjutant considered Watkins unduly high-spirited, and they fell out. On one occasion, when the regiment was trialling new winter-warfare clothing on a week’s mountain exercise, Watkins organised a vigorous inter-troop snowball battle. But this kind of exuberance did not go down well and he was twice placed under arrest.

In 1957 he was posted to 5 Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) Regiment. He was, however, looking for a civilian job, and when his wavering commitment to Army life became obvious, the commanding officer decided to move him on.

To be transferred from the elite RHA for lack of enthusiasm was almost inconceivable, and this blot on his record would follow him wherever he went. It was “in semi disgrace”, as Watkins put it, that he arrived at 14 Field Regiment RA at Barnard Castle in Co Durham.

It was an awkward time because his reputation as a failure had gone before him. Redemption, however, came unexpectedly when Watkins attended an inter-regimental boxing match after a formal regimental dinner night.