Page 141 - They Also Served

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Richard McCreery 1915.
Richard Loudon McCreery was born in
Market Harborough, Leicestershire, on
1st February 1898. Educated at Eton
College, he sat the Sandhurst entrance
exam soon after his 17th birthday and
was commissioned into the 12th Royal
Lancers in August 1915. Too young to
be sent to France, he served in Ireland
until his 18th birthday, when he joined
his regiment on the Western Front.
During the Battle of Arras in April 1917,
he was shot in the leg, severing the femoral artery. The tourniquet, which stopped him from bleeding to death, was not slackened and resulted in gangrene setting in. McCreery lost two toes and walked with a pronounced limp thereafter. Returning to action in the last few weeks of the war, he was awarded the MC ‘for valuable and dashing work while in command of a mounted patrol’.
Remaining in the army between the wars, he rose to command his regiment in 1935. A skilled and daring horseman, McCreery won the Grand Military Gold Cup (a National Hunt race at Sandown) in 1923 and 1928, and played international polo. During the campaign in France in 1940, he commanded the 2nd Armoured Brigade and, later that year, assumed command of the newly created 8th Armoured Division. After bringing the UK-based formation to a high level of readiness, McCreery was posted to a succession of staff jobs in the Middle East. These included the planning team for the battle of El Alamein and culminating in chief of staff of the 18th Army Group during the Tunisian campaign. Taking command of X Corps, despite never commanding a division on operations, he performed well during the Salerno landings and the advance to Monte Cassino.
Knighted in the field by the king in July 1944, he assumed command of the Eighth Army in December and led it during the remainder of the Italian campaign. The performance of the army in Italy has been largely overshadowed by its legendary exploits in the Western Desert, but the campaign resulted in the capture of over a million German soldiers. Historian Richard Doherty wrote: ‘Sir Richard McCreery managed one of the finest performances of a British Army in the course of the war. He
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