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Granville Egerton

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Granville Egerton
Major-General Granville Egerton in 1915
Born10 May 1859
Mayfair, London, England
Died3 May 1951 (aged 91)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Allegiance United Kingdom
Service / branch British Army
Years of service1879–1919
RankMajor general
Unit72nd Regiment of Foot
Seaforth Highlanders
CommandsSmall Arms School
52nd (Lowland) Division
Battles / warsSecond Afghan War

Anglo-Egyptian War
Nile Expedition
First World War

Relations1st Earl of Ellesmere (grandfather)

Major General Granville George Algernon Egerton (10 May 1859 – 3 May 1951)[1] was a British Army officer who commanded the 52nd (Lowland) Division during the First World War, from March 1914 to September 1915.[2] His wartime service included a command during the Gallipoli campaign.[3]

Early life

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Egerton was born at 35 Hertford Street in Mayfair, London, to Col. Hon. Arthur Frederick Egerton of the Grenadier Guards and his wife Helen (née Smith), daughter of Martin Tucker Smith of the Smith banking family.[4][5][6] His grandfather was the 1st Earl of Ellesmere.[7]

Attending Charterhouse School, he was a member of the house Saunderites between 1872 and 1879.[4] After completing his studies at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. The commission was dated 13 August 1879.[8]

Military career

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Serving with the 72nd Regiment of Foot, Egerton participated in the march from Kabul to Kandahar during the Second Afghan War. The British force defeated an Afghan army under Ayub Khan at the Battle of Kandahar, a battle in which Edgerton received severe wounds.[9] For his service in Afghanistan he was mentioned in dispatches.[4] Of the Kabul to Kandahar march Egerton wrote in 1930,[10]

Afghanistan is a country of high altitudes with extremities of temperature. Shivering at 45deg. Fahrenheit in a thin khaki coat at the start of the day's march, one knew well that before one reached camp the thermometer would have risen to 105deg. We were on the whole well fed on plain soldiers' rations-meat and chupattees ; officers and men shared alike.

He was promoted to lieutenant in June 1881.[11] His service continued with the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 and the Nile Expedition to Sudan in 1898, where he was mentioned in dispatches twice more.[4][7] He is recorded in 1893 as being in service as a captain, having been promoted to that rank in May 1889,[12] in the Seaforth Highlanders and was Scottish District Inspector of Musketry. In this capacity Edgerton, who in June 1898 was promoted to major,[13] was responsible for the training of regular, militia and volunteer soldiers in Scotland.[14] When an army camp was established at Barry in Angus the rifle ranges were constructed "in accordance with his ideas and under his supervision".[14]

He was promoted to colonel in March 1907 and became commandant of the Small Arms School at Hythe, Kent, taking over from Colonel Charles Monro, a Sandhurst classmate.[15]

Egerton became commander of the 1st Malta Infantry Brigade in September 1909 and relinquished command in December 1912, when he was promoted to major general.[16] He was then general officer commanding (GOC) of the Lowland Division, a Territorial Force (TF) formation, in March 1914,[17] just a few months prior to the outbreak of the First World War.[2]

He led his division in the Gallipoli campaign where it took part in the landing at Cape Helles in June 1915, eight months after the British entry into World War I, and Egerton received a further two mentions in dispatches during the First World War.[4] On 30 August 1915 Egerton noted,[18]

Oh my God, what a life this is! I shall want a six months' rest cure if I survive it, and please God no more soldiering for me again. A garden and the cultivation of flowers is what I look forward to.

Egerton went on to be director of infantry at the War Office in April 1916[2] and then retired with the rank of major general in 1919.[4]

Later life

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After the war he was colonel of the Highland Light Infantry between 1921 and 1929.[4] In a letter to The Times in 1927 he wrote of his service in the early days of the First World War,[19]

As and old Regular officer, and commander of a Territorial Division in the field, I shall always hold that the men who were Territorial soldiers on August 4, 1914, were, of all those who battled during the four years of conflict, the real true salt of the earth. Few of them remain, and very meagre were the thanks they got.

— Granville Egerton, The Times

He died at 7 Inverleith Place, Edinburgh, on 3 May 1951 with his funeral taking place at Warriston Crematorium.[4][5]

References

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  1. ^ Congress, The Library of. "LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress)". id.loc.gov. Retrieved 25 August 2019.
  2. ^ a b c Mackie, Colin. "Army Senior Appointments" (PDF). Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  3. ^ Haig's generals. Beckett, I. F. W. (Ian Frederick William), Corvi, Steven J. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper. 2006. ISBN 9781783034918. OCLC 854586469.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Arrowsmith, R. L. (1974). Charterhouse register 1769–1872 : with appendix of non-Foundationers 1614–1769. London: Phillimore. ISBN 0850330815. OCLC 5778054.
  5. ^ a b "Deaths". The Times. No. 51994. 7 May 1951. p. 1.
  6. ^ "Births". The Morning Post. No. 26645. 12 May 1859. p. 8.
  7. ^ a b "Kandahar March Survivor". Londonderry Sentinel. 5 May 1951.
  8. ^ "No. 24751". The London Gazette. 12 August 1879. p. 4904.
  9. ^ "National Museums of Scotland – 2nd Lieutenant Granville Egerton". nms.scran.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
  10. ^ Egerton, Granville (14 August 1930). "Kandahar". The Times. No. 45591. p. 13.
  11. ^ "No. 24989". The London Gazette. 28 June 1881. p. 3243.
  12. ^ "No. 25944". The London Gazette. 11 June 1889. p. 3174.
  13. ^ "No. 26975". The London Gazette. 7 June 1898. p. 3511.
  14. ^ a b "The Military Camp at Barry". The Dundee Courier & Argus. No. 12437. 13 May 1893. p. 6.
  15. ^ "No. 28010". The London Gazette. 5 April 1907. p. 2331.
  16. ^ "No. 28670". The London Gazette. 10 December 1913. p. 9398.
  17. ^ "No. 28816". The London Gazette. 27 March 1914. p. 2636.
  18. ^ Van Emden, Richard (12 March 2015). Gallipoli : the Dardanelles disaster in soldiers' words and photographs. Chambers, Stephen (Stephen J.). London. ISBN 9781408856161. OCLC 904293388.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  19. ^ "The Territorials Of 1914". The Times. No. 44509. 18 February 1927. p. 15.

Bibliography

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  • Raw, David (2020). Gallipoli, the Egerton Diaries and Papers: The Diaries and Papers of Major-General Granville Egerton CB Commanding 52nd Lowland Division at Gallipoli, June-September, 1915. Helion Limited. ISBN 978-1912390847.
[edit]
Military offices
Preceded by GOC 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division
1914–1915 		Succeeded by
Honorary titles
Preceded by Colonel of the Highland Light Infantry
1921–1929 		Succeeded by

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