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Arthur Sandbach

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Arthur Sandbach
In The Sketch, 22 January 1902
Born(1859-07-30)30 July 1859
Llangernyw, Denbighshire, Wales
Died25 June 1928(1928-06-25) (aged 68)
London, England
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service / branchBritish Army
RankMajor General
UnitRoyal Engineers
Commands59th (2nd North Midland) Division
68th (2nd Welsh) Division
1st Sappers and Miners
Battles / warsAnglo-Egyptian War
Mahdist War
Sikkim Expedition
Hazara Expedition of 1891
Nile Expedition
Second Boer War
First World War
AwardsCompanion of the Order of the Bath
Distinguished Service Order[1]
Mentioned in Despatches

Major General Arthur Edmund Sandbach, CB, DSO (30 July 1859 – 25 June 1928) was a British Army officer who served in the Royal Engineers and on the General Staff, eventually rising to command the 68th (2nd Welsh) and 59th (2nd North Midland) Divisions during the First World War.

Early life and military career

[edit]

Sandbach was born on 30 July 1859, the third son of Henry Robertson Sandbach of Hafodunos Hall in Denbighshire,[2] a wealthy Anglo-Welsh landowner.[3]

Sandbach was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich,[2] following which he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers as a lieutenant on 6 April 1879.[4][5] He served in the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, seeing action at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the 1885 Sudan campaign, the 1886–87 Burmese Expedition, and the Sikkim Expedition of 1888.[2] He was promoted to captain on 1 April 1889,[4][6] and in 1891 served as the aide-de-camp to Major General William Elles,[7] commanding the Hazara Expedition of 1891.[2] He was promoted to major in November 1897,[4][8] and during the Nile Expedition of 1898 he held the post of assistant adjutant general in the Egyptian army, where he was mentioned in despatches and appointed a brevet lieutenant colonel.[2][9]

On returning from Egypt at the start of 1899, Sandbach was appointed as the military secretary to the viceroy of India,[10] a post he held until November,[11] when the outbreak of the Second Boer War meant that he was sent to South Africa.[4] He worked on the staff in South Africa as assistant adjutant general,[12] for which he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) as well as a second mention in despatches.[2]

Returning from South Africa in 1902, Sandbach married the Hon. Ida Douglas-Pennant, a daughter of George Douglas-Pennant, 2nd Baron Penrhyn, with whom he had one daughter.[2] In 1904, he returned again to India where he was appointed to command the 1st Sappers and Miners, the senior Indian engineer regiment.[2] Accordingly, he was promoted to the brevet rank of colonel in February 1904,[13] and the substantive rank of lieutenant colonel in April 1905.[4][14] In 1907 he relinquished command of the 1st Sappers and returned to England, where he was appointed Officer Commanding Royal Engineers at Aldershot and took the (partly honorary) position as chairman of a Territorial Force (TF) county association. In 1910, he transferred to Irish Command as its chief engineer.[2] In this post, he was given a substantive promotion to colonel in April, following which he spent until October on the half-pay list,[15] whereupon he was made a temporary brigadier general.[4][16] He was also made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in June of that year.[17]

First World War

[edit]

Sandbach was still holding his post at Irish Command on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. While he officially remained chief engineer in Ireland until 5 October,[4] he was in fact appointed to accompany the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France, as the commander, Royal Engineers in II Corps.[18] He was promoted to major general in October 1914, "for distinguished service in the field",[19] and with the expansion of the BEF in early 1915, he was appointed as chief engineer of the Second Army,[20] but was recalled in April 1915 to act as the temporary inspector of Royal Engineers.[4]

In November 1915, Sandbach was appointed to command the 68th (2nd Welsh) Division, a second-line Territorial Force (TF) formation on home defence duties in England. He handed over command in February 1916 on his transfer to the 59th (2nd North Midland) Division, another TF formation.[4] The 59th was the "mobile division" in the Home Army, held in readiness to combat a landing along the East Coast; when the Easter Rising broke out in Dublin on 24 April 1916, it was ordered into immediate readiness and despatched to Ireland. Here, units of the division – many with only a few weeks' training – were hastily thrown into combat, some taking heavy casualties; the 2/7th and 2/8th Sherwood Foresters lost over two hundred men killed or wounded at Mount Street on 26 April and at the South Dublin Union on 27 April.[21][22] After the end of fighting in Dublin, the 59th moved to the Curragh for further training, and was returned to England at the end of the year.[23]

In February 1917, the 59th Division was ordered to the Western Front, despite concerns that its training schedule had been disrupted by service in Ireland. It was deployed during the advance to the Hindenburg Line in March–April 1917, where it took unexpectedly high losses.[23] Sandbach was relieved of command on 10 April,[4] felt by his superiors to be too old for command of a front-line division.[24] He was not given a further service appointment.[4] He retired from the army in August 1919,[25] by which time the war was over.

Following the war, Sandbach was appointed as a justice of the peace in Montgomeryshire, where he lived, and in 1919 served as the county's High Sheriff.

He died at the age of 68 on 25 June 1928 at 57 Manchester Street, Marylebone.[2]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "No. 11296". The Edinburgh Gazette. 23 April 1901. p. 466.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Sandbach, Maj.-Gen. Arthur Edmund". Who Was Who (Online ed.). A & C Black. 2007.
  3. ^ "Catalogue entry for the Bryngwyn Collection, Powys County Record Office". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Quarterly Army List for the quarter ending 30th June 1919. London: HMSO. 1919. pp. 32.
  5. ^ "No. 24710". The London Gazette. 18 April 1879. p. 2869.
  6. ^ "No. 25926". The London Gazette. 23 April 1900. p. 2291.
  7. ^ "No. 26182". The London Gazette. 14 July 1891. p. 3725.
  8. ^ "No. 26919". The London Gazette. 14 December 1897. p. 7480.
  9. ^ "No. 27023". The London Gazette. 15 November 1898. p. 6690.
  10. ^ "No. 27062". The London Gazette. 14 March 1899. p. 1758.
  11. ^ "No. 27168". The London Gazette. 23 February 1900. p. 1266.
  12. ^ "No. 27220". The London Gazette. 14 August 1900. p. 5037.
  13. ^ "No. 27702". The London Gazette. 5 August 1904. p. 5056.
  14. ^ "No. 27789". The London Gazette. 2 May 1905. p. 3156.
  15. ^ "No. 28355". The London Gazette. 8 April 1910. p. 2412.
  16. ^ "No. 28425". The London Gazette. 18 October 1910. p. 7352.
  17. ^ "No. 28388". The London Gazette (Supplement to the London Gazette Extraordinary). 24 June 1910. p. 4476.
  18. ^ Appendix 1: Order of battle of the British Expeditionary Force, August 1914. In: Edmonds, J. E. (1922). Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1914. Volume I: Mons, the Retreat to the Seine, the Marne and the Aisne, August — October 1914. History of the Great War. London: Macmillan and co.
  19. ^ "No. 28975". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 November 1914. p. 9361.
  20. ^ "No. 29227". The London Gazette (Supplement). 9 July 1915. p. 6818.
  21. ^ Western Front Association (2012). "The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, Dublin, 1916". Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  22. ^ Western Front Association (2012). "The Battle for the South Dublin Union, 1916".
  23. ^ a b Baker, Chris (2010). "The 59th (2nd North Midland) Division". The British Army in the Great War.
  24. ^ Robbins, Simon (2005). British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–18: Defeat into Victory. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-35006-9
  25. ^ "No. 31627". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 October 1919. p. 13411.
Military offices
Preceded by GOC 68th (2nd Welsh) Division
1915–1916 		Succeeded by
Preceded by GOC 59th (2nd North Midland) Division
1916–1917 		Succeeded by
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