Colonel Earle William Nicoll, former commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, the Black Watch, who has died aged 74, was the son of a prosperous Dundee jute merchant who had served in the Black Watch in the First World War.

Earle Nicoll, usually known as ''Nick'', was born in Edinburgh on July 21, 1925. He was educated at Dundee High School and Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, and enlisted as a private in the Black Watch in 1944. He used to say: ''I began as a private and I shall be private in my retirement,'' and he was. He joined the 2nd Black Watch in India in 1944, trained as an officer in Karachi, and was commissioned in 1946.

In 1952 he was Adjutant of the 1st Battalion during the ferocious battles for The Hook, a camel-shaped ridge a few miles from the western coast of Korea which the Black Watch held and the Chinese and North Koreans desperately wished to capture as it jutted into their lines. On taking over the position from the 7th US Marines, who held on to it with great difficulties, the Black Watch wired and entrenched their vulnerable outpost and held it in the face of massive Chinese attacks which were made with complete indifference to casualties. At one point the huge numbers of the Chinese enabled them to reach the Black Watch trenches but they were driven out by the Jocks who used grenades, bayonets, and every other form of close-quarter weapon in a fierce counter-attack.

Although the Black Watch had 16 killed and 76 wounded, they killed so many Chinese in repelling the attack that the latter did not try again for the ridge for two months.

When the Black Watch had taken over the line they had been urged to capture a Chinese prisoner, a task of no slight difficulty as the Chinese were ready to die rather than surrender. However, Nicoll had the bright idea of offering a bottle of whisky to anyone who should succeed in bringing in a prisoner. He was astonished the following morning to find that seven had been captured during the night.

After Korea, the Black Watch were posted to Kenya where they hunted Mau Mau terrorists in the forests and mountains. Nicoll subsequently served on the staff and with the 1st Battalion before taking command of the battalion on a six-month tour of Cyprus as part of the UN Peace-keeping Force. He caused eyebrows to be raised when he ordered that the regiment's Red Hackle should be worn on the UN beret. Later postings took him to Turkey and Germany and lastly to the post of defence attache at the British Embassy in Brussels.

He was awarded a CBE and the LVO (Lieutenant Royal Victorian Order).

Nick Nicoll was a popular and much-respected officer whom the Jock soldiers felt really understood them. A good all-round sportsman: rugby, football, cricket, boxing, and golf were his main sports. He was a devotee of traditional jazz, which he liked to play loudly.

He is survived by his wife, formerly Valerie Finch, and their daughter and four sons.