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Tag Archives: Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)


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Birth of George Roupell, British Army Officer & Victoria Cross Recipient

Brigadier George Rowland Patrick Roupell, VC, CB, DL, a senior officer in the British Army and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, is born on April 7, 1892, in Tipperary, County Tipperary.

Roupell is born into a military family. His father, Francis Frederick Fyler Roupell, having served with the British Army in the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot and commanded the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment from 1895 to 1899, is promoted to colonel in 1901. He had married Edith Maria Bryden at Kingston in 1887.

Roupell is educated at Rossall School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He is commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment, his father’s regiment, on March 2, 1912, and is appointed a lieutenant on April 29, 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

At the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, the 1st Battalion the East Surreys are deployed as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into northern Belgium. Roupell commands a platoon in the BEF’s first major action, the Battle of Mons, in August 1914. He keeps a diary throughout the war, which has since been a, sometimes humorous, source of insight and observation on the events that he witnessed and participated in. In the trenches at Mons, he recounts how he had to hit his men on the backside with his sword in order to gain their attention and remind them to fire low as they had been taught.

Soon after, following the retreat from Mons in September 1914, Roupell leads his platoon in the First Battle of the Aisne. Once again, he comes under heavy fire, this time while crossing the Aisne on a raft. The Surreys’ advance is pushed back with heavy casualties.

On April 20, 1915, during the continued fighting around Ypres, Roupell is commanding a company of his battalion in a front trench on “Hill 60,” which is subjected to a most severe bombardment throughout the day. Although wounded in several places, he remains at his post and leads his company in repelling a strong German assault. During a lull in the bombardment, he has his wounds hurriedly dressed, and then insists on returning to his trench, which is again being subjected to severe bombardment. Toward evening, his company being dangerously weakened, he goes back to his battalion headquarters, represents the situation to his commanding officer, and brings up reinforcements, passing back and forth over ground swept by heavy fire. With these reinforcements he holds his position throughout the night, and until his battalion is relieved next morning. For these actions he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

Roupell is presented with his VC by King George V on July 12, 1915. In addition to his Victoria Cross, he is awarded the Russian Order of St. George (4th Class) and the French Croix de guerre and is mentioned in dispatches. He is retrospectively appointed temporary captain with effect from December 29, 1914, to April 20, 1915, inclusive, and again later the same year.

Roupell is aboard TSS The Queen when it is captured and sunk in the English Channel in October 1916. He is appointed acting brigade major on December 29, 1917. On May 9, 1918, he is seconded to the general staff with the rank of temporary major.

Following the end of hostilities in Europe, Roupell, still an acting major, is promoted to acting lieutenant colonel in charge of a battalion from December 1918 to March 1919. His appointment to the general staff is confirmed on July 1, 1919. During this time, he is attached to the allied force under Edmund Ironside and sent to support Tsarist Russians as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. On a visit to a Tsarist unit, they mutiny, and he and others are taken prisoner near Arkhangelsk, sent to Moscow, and finally repatriated in 1920.

Early in 1921, Roupell marries Doris P. Sant in Paddington. Daughter Phoebe and son Peter are born in 1922 and 1925, respectively.

Roupell’s inter-war military career continues with appointments as staff captain (1921), brigade major (1926), and promotion to substantive major (1928). During the inter-war period, he serves in Gibraltar, the Regimental Depot, India and the Sudan and he attends the Staff College, Camberley. As major (GSO2), he spends two years from 1929 at the Royal Military College of Canada, and in 1934 a year with the British troops in China. Following his return, he is promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1935.

At the outbreak of World War II, in September 1939, Roupell is promoted to colonel and made an acting brigadier, placed in command of 36th Infantry Brigade from October 7, 1939. His brigade is deployed as part of the 12th (Eastern) Division in April 1940 and becomes part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), taking part in the Battle of France. The German thrust near the river Somme toward Abbeville eventually cuts off the BEF, northern French and Belgian forces from the rest of France. His brigade headquarters near Doullens is attacked by enemy troops and, on being told of the threat, he exclaims, “Never mind the Germans. I’m just going to finish my cup of tea.”

When the brigade headquarters is overrun on May 20, 1940, Roupell gives the order for the survivors to split up into small groups and endeavour to re-contact Allied troops. He, with a captain and French interpreter, avoid capture, hiding by day and walking at night for over a month. They arrive at a farm near Rouen where the two officers remain for almost two years, working as labourers. With the help of the French Resistance, they are moved through unoccupied France into non-belligerent Spain, finally boarding a ship in Gibraltar and returning to the United Kingdom.

Following his return, Roupell is appointed commanding officer of the 114th Brigade, part of the 38th (Welsh) Infantry Division, on March 18, 1943, a command he holds until November 2 of that year. The brigade is not destined to see battle, however, and he is soon appointed as garrison commander at Chatham, where he remains until retirement.

In 1946, Roupell is formally retired from the army on retirement pay and granted the honorary rank of brigadier and, at the age of 58, is excused from the reserve list of officers in 1950. He is appointed a Deputy lieutenant of Surrey in 1953.

In 1954, Roupell is appointed Colonel of the East Surreys, succeeding Lieutenant General Arthur Dowler, and is to be the last Colonel of the East Surrey Regiment, relinquishing office in 1959 when amalgamation with the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) takes place to form the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment. He is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1956.

Roupell dies at the age of 81 in Shalford, Surrey, on March 4, 1974. His body is cremated at Guildford Crematorium, where his ashes are scattered.


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Birth of Sir John Greer Dill, Irish-born British Army Officer

Sir John Greer Dill, senior British Army officer with service in both World War I and World War II, is born on December 25, 1881, at Lurgan, County Armagh. From May 1940 to December 1941, he is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently serves in Washington, D.C., as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission and then Senior British Representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS).

Dill is the only son of John Dill, bank manager, and Jane Dill (née Greer). He is educated at Cheltenham College in England before entering the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he joins the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) in May 1901 and serves in South Africa for the remainder of the Second Boer War. Promoted to captain in 1911, he is a student at the Staff College, Camberley, at the outbreak of World War I. He holds several important staff appointments during the war, including brigade major of 25th Brigade (8th Division) and General Staff Officer (Grade 2) to the Canadian Corps. Present at the battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Arras, and Third Ypres, at the end of the war he is serving as chief of operations branch at GHQ with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (1915), the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) (1918), the French Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Remaining active during the interwar years, Dill serves as chief assistant to the commandant of the Staff College (1919–22) before commanding the Welsh Border Brigade, TA (1922–23), and 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot (1923–26). In late 1926, he is appointed army instructor at the newly established Imperial Defence College. A period in India follows as general staff officer of the Western Command (1929–31), based at Quetta. On return to England, he is promoted to major general and made commandant of the Staff College. Appointments as commander of the British forces in Palestine and Transjordan (1936–37) and the Aldershot Command (1937–39) follow. During this period, he shows a remarkable ability to both train and inspire those under his command. Most of his colleagues expect him to become the new chief of the Imperial General Staff and are surprised when Major General Lord Gort, junior to Dill in both rank and seniority, is appointed to the post.

At the outbreak of World War II Dill commands I Corps British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and is made a full general. In April 1940, he is made vice-CIGS and in May takes over as CIGS. His initial period in office is not a happy one, and he has to inform the public of setbacks in both Norway and France. His workload is enormous, and after the evacuation at Dunkirk in late May he devotes himself to preparing the defences of Britain against invasion. He clashes with Winston Churchill throughout 1941, advocating a more cautious and realistic approach to the situations in North Africa, Greece, and Crete.

The workload begins to affect his health adversely, and in November 1941 it is announced that he will resign as CIGS on reaching the age of 60 and serve as governor-designate of Bombay with the rank of field marshal. He seeks to be more actively involved in the war effort, however, and in December 1941 he visits the United States with Churchill, remaining there as head of the British joint staff mission in Washington, D.C. He plays a significant role in promoting Anglo–American military cooperation and attends the Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran conferences.

In late 1944 his health again breaks down and he dies from aplastic anemia on November 4, 1944, at the Walter Reed General Hospital, Washington, D.C. After a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, he is buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later pays tribute to him as a great soldier and friend, “the most important figure in the remarkable accord which has been developed in the combined operations of our two countries.”

Dill first marries (1907) Ada Maud Le Mottée, daughter of Col. William Le Mottée of the 18th Regiment. Their son, Major John de Guerin Dill, serves as an artillery officer throughout World War II. In October 1941, Dill marries Nancy Isabelle Charrington, widow of Brigadier Denis Walter Furlong. Dill’s honours include a GCB (1942), an honorary degree from Princeton University (1944), the Howland Memorial Prize of Yale University (1944), and a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) from the United States government. There are portraits of him in Cheltenham College and the Imperial War Museum, and a statue in Washington, D.C.

(From: “Dill, Sir John Greer” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Sir John Greer Dill, bromide print, 1932, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Death of Sir James Craig, First Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC PC (NI) DL, prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 until his death, dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down, at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940.

Craig is born at Sydenham, Belfast, on January 8, 1871, the seventh of nine children of James Craig (1828–1900), a wealthy whiskey distiller who had entered the firm of Dunville & Co. as a clerk and by age 40 is a millionaire and a partner in the firm. Craig Snr. owns a large house called Craigavon, overlooking Belfast Lough. His mother, Eleanor Gilmore Browne, is the daughter of Robert Browne, a prosperous man who owned property in Belfast and a farm outside Lisburn. Craig is educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland. After school he begins work as a stockbroker, eventually opening his own firm in Belfast.

Craig enlists in the 3rd (Militia) battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles on January 17, 1900, to serve in the Second Boer War. He is seconded to the Imperial Yeomanry, a cavalry force created for service during the war, as a lieutenant in the 13th battalion on February 24, 1900, and leaves Liverpool for South Africa on the SS Cymric in March 1900. After arrival he is soon sent to the front and is taken prisoner in May 1900, but released by the Boers because of a perforated colon. On his recovery he becomes deputy assistant director of the Imperial Military Railways, showing the qualities of organisation that are to mark his involvement in both British and Ulster politics. In June 1901 he is sent home suffering from dysentery, and by the time he is fit for service again the war is over. He is promoted to captain in the 3rd Royal Irish Rifles on September 20, 1902, while still seconded to South Africa.

On his return to Ireland, having received a £100,000 legacy from his father’s will, Craig turns to politics, serving as Member of the British Parliament for East Down from 1906 to 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he represents Mid Down and serves in the British government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Pensions (1919–20) and Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty (1920–21).

Craig rallies Ulster loyalist opposition to Irish Home Rule in Ulster before World War I, organising the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers (UVF) and buying arms from Imperial Germany. The UVF becomes the nucleus of the 36th (Ulster) Division during World War I. He succeeds Edward Carson as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in February 1921.

In the 1921 Northern Ireland general election, the first ever, Craig is elected to the newly created House of Commons of Northern Ireland as one of the members for Down.

On June 7, 1921, Craig is appointed the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The House of Commons of Northern Ireland assembles for the first time later that day.

Craig is made a baronet in 1918, and in 1927 is created Viscount Craigavon, of Stormont in the County of Down. He is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (1922) and the University of Oxford (1926).

Craig had made his career in British as well as Northern Irish politics, but his premiership shows little sign of his earlier close acquaintance with the British political world. He becomes intensely parochial and suffers from his loss of intimacy with British politicians in 1938, when the British government concludes agreements with Dublin to end the Anglo-Irish trade war between the two countries. He never tries to persuade Westminster to protect Northern Ireland‘s industries, especially the linen industry, which is central to its economy. He is anxious not to provoke Westminster, given the precarious state of Northern Ireland’s position. In April 1939, and again in May 1940 during World War II, he calls for conscription to be introduced in Northern Ireland (which the British government, fearing a backlash from nationalists, refuses). He also calls for Winston Churchill to invade Ireland using Scottish and Welsh troops in order to seize the valuable ports and install a Governor-General at Dublin.

While still prime minister, Craig dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940. He is buried on the Stormont Estate on December 5, 1940, and is succeeded as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Minister of Finance, J. M. Andrews.

(Pictured: James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, bromide print by Olive Edis, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Death of Major General William Hickie, Irish-Born British Army Officer

Major General Sir William Bernard Hickie, KCB, Irish-born senior British Army officer and Irish nationalist politician dies in Dublin on November 3, 1950. He sees active service in the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902, is Assistant Quartermaster General in the Irish Command from 1912 to 1914 and serves in World War I from 1914 to 1918. He commands a brigade of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 and is commander of the 16th (Irish) Division from 1915 on the Western Front.

Hickie is born on May 21, 1865, at Slevoir, Terryglass, near Borrisokane, County Tipperary, the eldest of the eight children of Colonel James Francis Hickie and his wife Lucila Larios y Tashara, originally of Castile. He is educated at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham, England, a renowned seminary for training youths of prosperous Roman Catholic families.

Hickie attends the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1882 to 1885. He is commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and serves with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and India, during which time he is promoted to captain on November 18, 1892. In 1899 he graduates as captain at the Staff College, Camberley, and is selected when the Second Boer War breaks out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acts in various positions of authority and command. He leaves Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900, and is promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on March 17, 1900. He is subsequently in command of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he is given command of an independent column of all arms. He holds this position for eighteen months. He serves with distinction at the Battle of Bothaville in November 1900, and receives the brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1900. He serves in South Africa throughout the war, which ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he leaves Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Royal Fusiliers, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion is posted to Aldershot Garrison. In December 1902 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).

After the end of the war in South Africa there follows various staff appointments, the first from December 1902 as deputy-assistant adjutant general for district staff in the Cork district. In 1907 Hickie is back in regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he is in command of the regiment for the last two years. From 1909 to 1912 is appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he is well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912, he is promoted to colonel and becomes Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham for which he is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

When war is declared, the Staff of the Irish Command becomes automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Hickie is promoted to brigadier general and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, takes charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General’s Department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the First Battle of the Marne. In mid-September 1914, he relieves one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th Brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commands the 53rd Brigade (18th Infantry Division) until December 1915, when he is ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.

Promoted to major general, Hickie takes over from Lieutenant General Sir Lawrence Parsons. It is politically a highly sensitive appointment which requires the professionalism and political awareness he, fortunately, possesses as the division is formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Edward Carson‘s Ulster Volunteers. He is much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and speaks of the pride which his new command gives him but does not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it leaves under Irish command of which each man takes personal pride. It arrives in December 1915.

In the next two years and four months during which Hickie commands the 16th (Irish) Division, it earns a reputation for aggression and élan and wins many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, both of which form part of the Battle of the Somme, then during the Battle of Messines, the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917.

During this period the Division makes considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits, due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland, is successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.

In February 1918, Hickie is invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in the hospital the German spring offensive begins on March 21, with the result that after his division moves under the command of General Hubert Gough it is practically wiped out and ceases to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this does not happen before the Armistice in November. He typifies the army’s better divisional commanders, is articulate, intelligent and is competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916–17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918. He is advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1918.

Hickie retires from the army in 1922, when the six Irish line infantry regiments that have their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new Irish Free State are all disbanded. He identifies himself strongly with the Home Rule Act and says that its scrapping is a disaster and is equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. In 1925, he is elected as a member of Seanad Éireann, the Irish Free State Senate.

Hickie holds his seat until the Seanad is dissolved in 1936, to be replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937. He is President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the Royal British Legion from 1925 to 1948. He never marries.

Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin and is buried in Terryglass, County Tipperary.


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Death of Arthur Hill, 2nd Marquess of Downshire

Arthur Hill, 2nd Marquess of Downshire PC, FRS, British peer and MP styled Viscount Fairford until 1789 and Earl of Hillsborough from 1789 to 1793, dies by suicide on September 7, 1801.

Hill is born on March 3, 1753, the eldest son of Wills Hill, 1st Earl of Hillsborough (later Marquess of Downshire). He matriculates at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1771, and receives his MA in 1773.

Hill sits as a Tory for the rotten borough of Lostwithiel from 1774 to 1780, and then for Malmesbury until 1784. He also represents County Down in the Irish House of Commons from 1776 until succeeding to the peerage in 1793.

Hill enjoys a number of civil and military appointments in both England and Ireland during this period. He is commissioned a captain in the Hertfordshire Militia on March 22, 1775, and a lieutenant colonel in the regiment on May 4, 1787, resigning his commission on June 4, 1794. Appointed the deputy governor of County Down on August 6, 1779, he is picked as High Sheriff of Down in 1785. He is chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society on January 22, 1790, and a deputy lieutenant of Berkshire on May 12, 1792.

Upon the death of his father on October 7, 1793, Hill succeeds him as Marquess of Downshire, in the Peerage of Ireland, as well as in his other subsidiary titles, including that of Earl of Hillsborough in the Peerage of Great Britain. He also succeeds his father as Hereditary Constable of Hillsborough Fort, and as Custos Rotulorum of County Down (October 16) and Governor of Down (October 17). On November 7, he is appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland.

Hill vigorously exerts himself against the Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 and is punished by the Government for his opposition by being dismissed from the Governorship of Down and the colonelcy of the Downshire Militia and struck off the roll of the Privy Council on February 12, 1800.

On June 29, 1786, Hill marries Mary Sandys, by whom he has seven children:

Hill’s last son, Lord George Hill, is born posthumously, as he dies by suicide on September 7, 1801. His widow, Mary, feels his early death is in part due to his humiliation by the Government, and thereafter is a bitter enemy to Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. She is the heiress of her uncle, Edwin Sandys, 2nd Baron Sandys, and to the estates of her grandfather, William Trumbull, including Easthampstead Park. In 1802, after Hill’s death, she is created Baroness Sandys, with a special remainder to her younger sons and their male heirs in succession and then to her eldest son and his male heirs.

Hill also has a son, William Arthur Dore-Hill, born in 1778, with his mistress Sarah Dore (who later marries William Garrow).