38 Facts About Claude Auchinleck

Claude Auchinleck served as commander-in-chief, India, until the Partition in 1947, when he assumed the role of supreme commander of all British forces in India and Pakistan until late 1948.

Claude Auchinleck soon learned several Indian languages, and, able to speak fluently with his soldiers, he absorbed a knowledge of local dialects and customs: this familiarity engendered a lasting mutual respect, enhanced by his own personality.

Claude Auchinleck was promoted to lieutenant on 21 April 1905, and then spent the next two years in Tibet and Sikkim before moving to Benares in 1907 where he caught diphtheria.

Claude Auchinleck saw active service in the First World War and was deployed with his regiment to defend the Suez Canal: in February 1915 he was in action against the Turks at Ismailia.

Claude Auchinleck's regiment moved into Aden to counter the Turkish threat there in July 1915.

In July 1916 Claude Auchinleck was promoted acting major and made second in command of his battalion.

Claude Auchinleck took part in a series of fruitless attacks on the Turks at the Battle of Hanna in January 1916 and was one of the few British officers in his regiment to survive these actions.

Claude Auchinleck became acting commanding officer of his battalion in February 1917 and led his regiment at the Second Battle of Kut in February 1917 and the Fall of Baghdad in March 1917.

Claude Auchinleck attended the Staff College, Quetta, between 1920 and 1921.

Holidaying at Grasse on the French Riviera, Claude Auchinleck, who was on leave from India at the time, met Jessie on the tennis courts.

Sixteen years younger than Claude Auchinleck, Jessie became known as 'the little American girl' in India, but adapted readily to life there.

Claude Auchinleck became temporary Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General at Army Headquarters in February 1923 and then second-in-command of his regiment, which in the 1923 reorganisation of the Indian Army had become the 1st Punjab Regiment, in September 1925.

Claude Auchinleck attended the Imperial Defence College in 1927 and, having been promoted to the permanent rank of lieutenant-colonel on 21 January 1929 he was appointed to command his regiment.

Claude Auchinleck was promoted to temporary brigadier on 1 July 1933 and given command of the Peshawar Brigade, which was active in the pacification of the adjacent tribal areas during the Mohmand and Bajaur Operations between July and October 1933: during his period of command he was mentioned in despatches.

Claude Auchinleck led a second punitive expedition during the Second Mohmand Campaign in August 1935 for which he was again mentioned in despatches, promoted to major-general on 30 November 1935 and appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India on 8 May 1936.

On leaving his brigade command in April 1936, Claude Auchinleck was on the unemployed list until September 1936 when he was appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Director of Staff Duties in Delhi.

Claude Auchinleck was then appointed to command the Meerut District in India in July 1938.

Claude Auchinleck received promotion to acting lieutenant general on 1 February 1940 and to the substantive rank of lieutenant general on 16 March 1940.

In May 1940 Claude Auchinleck took over command of the Anglo-French ground forces during the Norwegian campaign, a military operation that was doomed to fail.

Claude Auchinleck's stay was not to be for very long as, just a few weeks later, Brooke succeeded General Sir Edmund Ironside as Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, with Auchinleck succeeding Brooke as GOC-in-C of Southern Command, responsible for the defence of Southern England, where the expected invasion would come from.

Claude Auchinleck acted decisively, sending the 1st Battalion of the King's Own Royal Regiment by air to Habbaniya and shipping the 10th Indian Infantry Division by sea to Basra.

Claude Auchinleck launched an offensive in the Western Desert, Operation Crusader, in November 1941: despite some tactical reverses during the fighting which resulted in Auchinleck replacing the Eighth Army commander Alan Cunningham with Neil Ritchie, by the end of December the besieged garrison of Tobruk had been relieved and Rommel obliged to withdraw to El Agheila.

Claude Auchinleck appears to have believed that the enemy had been defeated, writing on 12 January 1942 that the Axis forces were "beginning to feel the strain" and were "hard pressed".

Brooke commented that Claude Auchinleck "could have been one of the finest of commanders" but lacked the ability to select the men to serve him.

Claude Auchinleck discarded Ritchie's plan to stand at Mersa Matruh, deciding to fight only a delaying action there, while withdrawing to the more easily defendable position at El Alamein.

Claude Auchinleck was an Indian Army officer and was criticised for apparently having little direct experience or understanding of British and Dominion troops.

Churchill constantly sought an offensive from Claude Auchinleck, and was downcast at the military reverses in Egypt and Cyrenaica.

Claude Auchinleck badgered Auchinleck immediately after the Eighth Army had all but exhausted itself after the first battle of El Alamein.

Claude Auchinleck was replaced as Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command by General Sir Harold Alexander.

Claude Auchinleck set his reasons out in his letter to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff dated 14 August 1942.

However, the appointment of the new command's Supreme Commander, Acting Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, was not announced until August 1943 and until Mountbatten could set up his headquarters and assume control, Claude Auchinleck retained responsibility for operations in India and Burma while conducting a review and revision of Allied plans based on the decisions taken by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Quadrant Conference, which ended in August.

Claude Auchinleck made the supply of Fourteenth Army, with probably the worst lines of communication of the war, his immediate priority; as Sir William Slim, commander of the Fourteenth Army, was later to write:.

Claude Auchinleck suffered a personal disappointment when his wife Jessie left him for his friend, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peirse.

Peirse and Claude Auchinleck had been students together at the Imperial Defence College, but that was long before.

Peirse had his marriage dissolved, and Claude Auchinleck obtained a divorce in 1946.

Claude Auchinleck always carried a photograph of Jessie in his wallet even after the divorce.

Claude Auchinleck continued as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army after the end of the war helping, though much against his own convictions, to prepare the future Indian and Pakistani armies for the Partition of India: in November 1945 he was forced to commute the more serious judicial sentences awarded against officers of the Indian National Army in face of growing unease and unrest both within the Indian population, and the British Indian Army.

Claude Auchinleck is buried in Ben M'Sik European Cemetery, Casablanca, in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission plot in the cemetery, next to the grave of Raymond Steed who was the second youngest non-civilian Commonwealth casualty of the Second World War.