42 Facts About Gordon MacMillan

Between the World Wars, MacMillan remained in the army, occupying posts of increasing seniority.

Gordon MacMillan married Marian Blakiston Houston in 1929, and they had one daughter and four sons.

Gordon MacMillan was appointed Brigadier General Staff IX Corps in December 1941, remaining in this post during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa and through to the fall of Tunis in May 1943.

Gordon MacMillan was given command of the 152nd Brigade in June 1943 and led it during the successful Sicily campaign.

Gordon Holmes Alexander MacMillan was born near Bangalore, Kingdom of Mysore, India, on 7 January 1897.

Gordon MacMillan's father, Dugald MacMillan, was a coffee plantation owner.

Gordon MacMillan was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on 11 August 1915.

Gordon MacMillan was promoted to lieutenant in April 1917, and formally confirmed as adjutant in June.

Gordon MacMillan remained in this post for the rest of the war, serving seven different commanding officers.

Gordon MacMillan was one of only 168 soldiers to receive the Military Cross and two Bars in the First World War.

Gordon MacMillan's MCs were awarded for exceptional gallantry in the battles of High Wood, Arras and Le Cateau.

Gordon MacMillan's instructors included Henry Pownall, Wilfrid Lindsell, Richard O'Connor, Harold Franklyn, Bernard Paget, George Giffard and Bernard Montgomery.

On 10 August 1929, Gordon MacMillan married Marian Blakiston Houston; they had five children.

Gordon MacMillan went on to serve successively as captain, staff captain and General Staff Officer Grade 3 in the War Office in the early 1930s.

Gordon MacMillan was promoted to major on 1 August 1938, and, from 10 January 1939, served as a GSO2 to the staff of HQ Eastern Command.

On 10 April 1940, seven months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Gordon MacMillan was promoted to acting lieutenant-colonel and appointed as GSO1 in HQ 55th Motor Division, a first line Territorial Army formation.

In May the following year, with the division, now under Major-General William Morgan and serving in East Anglia under Lieutenant-General Hugh Massy's XI Corps, being still concerned mainly with home defence, Gordon MacMillan was promoted, on 1 May 1941, to the acting rank of brigadier and took up command of the 55th Division's 199th Brigade.

Gordon MacMillan trained the brigade very hard over the next few months in numerous large-scale exercises until, in late December 1941, he was chosen to be Brigadier General Staff in the HQ of IX Corps District.

Gordon MacMillan was later appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for what Crocker described in his citation as his "very high order" of service in the command structure of IX Corps during the campaign.

The division had come under IX Corps command for the final stages of the campaign and so Gordon MacMillan was familiar with it.

Gordon MacMillan was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his performance in this campaign, awarded on 18 November 1943.

Gordon MacMillan was briefly appointed as acting GOC of VIII Corps while O'Connor arrived to replace Harding.

Gordon MacMillan's division was relieved and sent to a more peaceful area, where the division, which had sustained some 2,300 casualties, including 288 killed, began to re-equip and absorb battle casualty replacements.

Gordon MacMillan is one of the best, if not the best, and commands the best lot out here.

Gordon MacMillan was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath for "his excellent example and untiring efforts" during the period following the landings.

The division had just launched an offensive to drive the Germans out of their remaining positions when Gordon MacMillan was ordered to become GOC of the 51st Division in place of his friend, Major-General Tom Rennie, who had commanded the 154th Brigade in Sicily when Gordon MacMillan commanded the 152nd Brigade.

Gordon MacMillan was mentioned in despatches for "gallant and distinguished service" on two occasions, on 9 August 1945 and 4 April 1946.

Gordon MacMillan was made Colonel of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on 1 October 1945.

Gordon MacMillan was promoted to the acting rank of lieutenant-general on 10 February 1947, and, three days later, took up his duties as GOC British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, replacing Lieutenant-General Sir Evelyn Barker, who he had succeeded as GOC of the 49th Division in November 1944, and who was then being sent home amid allegations of having had an affair and his antisemitic order following the King David Hotel Bombing in July 1946.

Gordon MacMillan recognised the increasing futility of trying to keep the peace between two parties committed to war rather than to cohabitation, and the need to prioritise arrangements for the safe, orderly and timely evacuation of all troops and other British residents as well as 270,000 tons of military equipment and stores.

Gordon MacMillan was the target of three assassination attempts by Palestinian Jews, and he was criticised fiercely by Arabs and Jews respectively for his failure to intervene in time to stop the Deir Yassin massacre and the attack on the Hadassah convoy.

In January 1949 Gordon MacMillan was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and appointed GOC-in-C of Scottish Command and Governor of Edinburgh Castle, where his office was located.

On 1 January 1954 Gordon MacMillan was promoted to the rank of general.

From 1955 Gordon MacMillan lived at Finlaystone, his wife's family home on the southern bank of the River Clyde, near the village of Langbank in Scotland.

Gordon MacMillan's family, consisting of his wife Marian, daughter Judy and four sons, George, John, David and Andrew, had been based here during the Second World War and the Palestine assignment.

Gordon MacMillan served for many years as one of the Commissioners of the Queen Victoria School, Dunblane, of which he had been ex-officio Chairman when GOC Scotland.

Gordon MacMillan was appointed Her Majesty's Vice-Lieutenant for the County of Renfrew in 1955.

Gordon MacMillan served as Chairman of the Greenock Harbour Trust and of the Firth of Clyde Drydock at the time of its establishment.

Gordon MacMillan was appointed the first Chairman of the Cumbernauld Development Corporation, responsible for building a "new town" between Glasgow and Stirling.

Gordon MacMillan was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by the University of Glasgow in 1969.

Gordon MacMillan died in a car accident on 21 January 1986, just two weeks after his eighty-ninth birthday.

Gordon MacMillan is buried against the north wall in the highly overgrown section of Newington Cemetery in Edinburgh but a path has been created to his grave.