Claude Auchinleck

In June 1940, he took control of English and French ground troops in Norway. This operation was not successful and the British were forced to retreat.

Auchinleck was then sent back to India. In July 1941, he took over from Archibald Wavell as commander-in-chief of the Middle Eastern Allied forces. He also commanded the Eighth Army. At first he enjoyed moderate successes in this role and managed to occupy the whole of Cyrenaica by the end of 1941.

Though ‘the Auk’ had a formidable opponent: Erwin Rommel, nicknamed the ‘Desert Fox’, who had by June 1942 re-won all of Auchinleck’s captured land. The Allies formed an impressively large defensive barrier around the small town of El Alamein and won the first battle of El Alamein. Despite this win, Winston Churchill was not persuaded by Auchinleck’s ability to lead his troops to a final victory in North Africa so he was dismissed. Auchinleck was replaced by Harold Alexander as commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in the Middle East and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army. Gott’s plane was shot down as he travelled to Cairo to take up his command and Bernard Montgomery instead took over this role.

In 1943, Auchinleck was made the Indian army’s commander-in-chief. A year later he suffered a personal blow when his wife left him for his friend air chief marshal Sir Richard Peirse. Auchinleck and Jessie Stewart formally divorced in 1946.

In 1946 he was promoted to Field Marshal. He continued as commander-in-chief of the Indian army just before Partition. After Partition in August 1947, Auchinleck became supreme commander of the remaining British forces in India and Pakistan. He left India in 1948, subsequently living in Italy and England before settling in Morocco, until his death in 1981.

See also: Feder von Bock