Page 81 - They Also Served

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Claude Auchinleck 1903.
The son of an army colonel, Claude
John Eyre Auchinleck was born in
Aldershot on 21st June 1884. Educated
at Eagle House School, then Wellington
College, he was commissioned from
Sandhurst into the Indian Army staff
corps in January 1903. At this time, only
the top ten percent of the intake were
allowed to join the Indian Army, and
he subsequently transferred to the 62nd
Punjabis. Quickly becoming fluent in
several languages, he developed a great affinity with India and its soldiers. A captain at the start of the Great War, he served mostly with his regiment in the Mesopotamian campaign, fighting Ottoman forces. During the Second Battle of Kut and the capture of Baghdad, he commanded his regiment and was awarded the DSO.
After attending the Indian Army Staff College at Quetta, Auchinleck rose steadily in the ranks, commanding his regiment again, now retitled the 1st Punjab Regiment, then the Peshawar Brigade on operations for which he was MiD in 1933 and again two years later. In the late 1930s, by now a major-general, he chaired the committee examining how to modernise and re-equip the Indian Army, which ultimately resulted in expansion from 183,000 men to well over two million by the war’s end. Summonsed back to the UK, he was given command of IV Corps, the only time in the war that a wholly British formation was commanded by an Indian Army officer. Later, in charge of Southern Command, he had an uneasy relationship with one of his subordinates, Bernard Montgomery, later writing: ‘I cannot recall that we ever agreed on anything’.
Meanwhile, Auchinleck’s star was still in the ascendancy, and he was promoted to general in December 1940, then returned to India as commander-in-chief. Here, he acted decisively, sending troops to beef up the defences in Iraq and thwarting a planned German invasion. Later in 1941, with the situation in the Western Desert deteriorating after early gains had been nullified by the arrival of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Auchinleck was ordered to swap with General Wavell, and he became commander-in-chief, Middle East. After yet more reverses and replacing Cunningham
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