14 Facts About John Keir

Lieutenant General Sir John Lindesay Keir was a British soldier and general of the late 19th and early 20th century.

John Keir was posted to a battery in India, and after six years was awarded his "jacket" and transferred into the Royal Horse Artillery.

John Keir had become a skilled rider in the artillery, and whilst he was too heavy to compete in traditional horse-racing, he participated in point-to-point racing and similar events.

John Keir's unit was not sent out with the Expeditionary Force, and he remained at home during the early stages of the war.

John Keir commanded the battalion for several months along the Orange River, and in December 1901 was assigned to command the Royal Artillery Mounted Rifles, a similar force drawn from regular artillerymen; he remained with this unit until shortly before the end of the war, and received the brevet rank of colonel in the South Africa Honours list published on 26 June 1902.

John Keir was promoted to major general in July 1909, and returned home in 1911.

John Keir remained with them until July 1914, when he was transferred to succeed Major General William Pulteney in command of the 6th Division, a Regular Army formation at that time based in Ireland.

John Keir had hardly been in command of the 6th Division for a month when the First World War began, and it was mobilised as part of the British Expeditionary Force for service in Europe.

In January 1916 John Keir was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant general.

On 8 August 1916 John Keir was relieved of command of VI Corps, whilst the official explanation for the move was given as being due to exhaustion or illness, the real cause was a personal dispute between John Keir and General Sir Edmund Allenby, his commanding general at the head of the Third Army.

On return to England John Keir was side-lined and without a command, and spent the remainder of the war fulminating about the role of privileged "cavalry generals", who he argued held a disproportionate number of senior posts in the BEF compared to infantrymen, gunners and engineers.

John Keir was formally retired from the British Army in July 1918, and wrote and published a book detailing his thoughts for the post-war future of the British Army, entitled A Soldier's-Eye View.

John Keir's suggested reforms included cutting the size of the peace-time regular forces, alongside significant reductions in cavalry forces, and reorganising the home and colonial forces for better efficiency.

John Keir died at Leamington Spa in the county of Warwickshire, on 3 May 1937, at the age of 80.