19 Facts About Archibald Nye

Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Edward Nye, was a senior British Army officer who served in both world wars.

Archibald Nye was the second of three sons born to the couple, who had three daughters.

Archibald Nye's father was a regimental sergeant major in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, British Army.

At the outset of the Great War, Archibald Nye went to France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, serving for just over a year as a non-commissioned officer in the Corps of Army Schoolmasters attached to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

Archibald Nye was further promoted to lieutenant on 5 September 1916, and to the acting rank of captain in August 1917.

Archibald Nye made a reconnaissance, under heavy shell and machine-gun fire, of the forward positions along the whole battalion front adjusting a portion on his own initiative to complete the line.

Archibald Nye was of great assistance to his commanding officer throughout the week's fighting.

Archibald Nye was then posted as an instructor to the Staff College with the local rank of lieutenant-colonel, and advanced to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 1 July 1934.

Archibald Nye was promoted to the substantive rank of major on 8 September 1935, and to the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel in September 1937.

On 20 May 1939, Archibald Nye was promoted to colonel, with the temporary rank of brigadier, and sent to India to raise a brigade, commanding the Nowshera Brigade from May 1939 to January 1940.

The partnership was highly successful and Archibald Nye remained in the job for the rest of the war.

Advanced to the temporary rank of lieutenant-general on 5 December 1942, in the 1944 Birthday Honours Archibald Nye was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the first of five knighthoods he would ultimately be conferred with.

Archibald Nye was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-general on 14 September 1944.

Archibald Nye attributed their success to the "zeal and energy of young men who conducted their own newspapers and who preached the creed of expropriating landlords and distributing their land to needy and hungry labourers".

Archibald Nye was the Colonel-in-chief of the Madras Regiment from 10 August 1946 to 31 March 1949.

In November 1947, when Sir Frederick Gentle, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, resigned over the Government of India order that the Chief Minister of the particular state should be consulted along with the Union Home Minister with regard to the selection of High Court judges, Archibald Nye expressed support for Gentle against political interference in appointment of judges.

On 15 August 1947, Archibald Nye was sworn in by Chief Justice Gentle as the first governor of Madras in the Dominion of India while OP.

Archibald Nye then served as the UK's High Commissioner to Canada from 1952 to 1956.

In 1939, Archibald Nye married divorcee Una Sheila Colleen, daughter of Sir Harry Hugh Sidney Knox.