Richard Gale (British Army officer)

Sir Richard Nelson Gale
Gale as GOC 6th Airborne Division, 10 June 1944.
Nickname(s)	Windy
Born	(1896-07-25)25 July 1896 Wandsworth, London, England
Died	29 July 1982(1982-07-29) (aged 86) Kingston upon Thames, London, England
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1915–1957 1958–1960
Rank	General
Unit	Worcestershire Regiment Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
Commands held	2/5th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment 1st Parachute Brigade 6th Airborne Division I Airborne Corps 1st Infantry Division British Troops in Egypt Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
Battles/wars	First World War Second World War Operation Tonga
Awards	Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire Distinguished Service Order Military Cross
Other work	Aide-de-camp (general) to Elizabeth II (1954–7), Colonel of the Worcestershire Regiment (1950–61), and Colonel-Commandant of the Parachute Regiment (1956–67).

General Sir Richard Nelson "Windy" Gale GCB KBE DSO MC (25 July 1896 – 29 July 1982) was a senior officer in the British Army who served in both world wars. In the First World War he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918 whilst serving as a junior officer in the Machine Gun Corps. During the Second World War he served with 1st Parachute Brigade and then the 6th Airborne Division during the D-Day landings and Operation Tonga in 1944. After the end of the conflict, Gale remained with the Army and eventually became the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

Early life

Gale was born on 25 July 1896 in London, England. The early years of his life were spent in Australia and New Zealand due to his father gaining employment in insurance, but the Gale family returned to England in 1906. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, a foundation school in the City of London, gaining an average academic record but becoming a prolific reader. After this, he attended further education at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. For a time, he was a boarder at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon. When Gale left Aldenham he wanted to become an officer in the Royal Artillery, but did not possess the academic qualifications or physical grades required for entry into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Instead he followed in his father's footsteps and gained employment as an insurance agent, but rapidly grew to dislike the job; determined to enter the British Army, he attended regular physical training classes and studied hard to improve his academic grades.

First World War

When the Great War broke out in 1914, Gale was still below the medical standards required for a recruit and failed to join a Territorial Force unit in London. He finally gained entry to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in the summer of 1915 and was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant on 22 December. When Gale joined the regiment, he put his name forward for a course on training with machine guns and was accepted, being transferred to the Machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham; there he discovered that he had not applied to join a course, but to actually join the Machine Gun Corps. Appointed to the Corps on 13 March 1916, in short order he was posted to the Western Front. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 1 November, and to the substantive rank on 1 July 1917. It was during his service as a subaltern in France that he won the Military Cross. During the Spring Offensive launched by the German Army in mid-March 1918, Gale was awarded his Military Cross for 'conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty'. He covered the retreat of a British infantry unit with his machine gun section, and when an artillery shell landed by a gun limber, he unhitched the killed and wounded horses under heavy fire to allow the limber to be moved away.

Inter-war years

When the war ended in 1918, Gale volunteered to go to India and serve with the British Indian Army, remaining in the Machine-Gun Corps until it was disbanded in 1922 and then reverting to serving with the Worcestershire Regiment. During his time in India he gained entry to the Staff College at Quetta and after two years in the institution he graduated as a staff officer. Promotion prospects in the inter-war years were limited, and although he received above average grades in his annual reports, he remained a subaltern for fifteen years, until he was promoted to the rank of Captain in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry on 26 February 1930.

In February 1932, Gale was seconded for service as a GSO3 in India. He was appointed a brigade major on 1 January 1934. Gale left India in January 1936 and returned to England to serve with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, receiving a brevet promotion to major on 1 July. In February 1937 he was transferred to the War Office as a General Staff Officer 2, with responsibilities for the creation of training pamphlets and publications. He transferred to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on 13 October. In December 1938 he was promoted to Major and moved to the Staff Duties (Planning) section of the General Staff.

Second World War

Gale talking to troops of 5th Parachute Brigade, in front of an Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle, June 1944.

By 1940 Gale had been promoted to the acting rank of lieutenant colonel and given command of the 2/5th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, a Territorial Army unit attached to the 138th Brigade, 46th Division. Then in the summer of 1941, the 1st Parachute Brigade was formed as part of the expansion of the British airborne forces, and Gale was offered command of the Brigade by Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Brooke, who was impressed with the high morale and standards in the battalion; Gale accepted the command. After a period spent organizing the Brigade, choosing officers and devising new training schemes, Gale, by now a war-substantive lieutenant-colonel, was posted to the War Office in 1942 as Deputy Director of Staff Duties, and subsequently promoted to Director of Air. Gale's remit as Director of Air was to attempt to formulate a clear policy about the use of airborne forces between the Army and the Royal Air Force, as well as to solve the aircraft shortages that stymied many attempts to conduct further airborne operations. There was a great deal of rivalry between the two services, with the RAF sure that large-scale bombing would win the conflict, and therefore unwilling to transfer any aircraft to the Army for use by airborne forces.

In May 1943, Gale was promoted to the acting rank of Major-General and assumed command of the newly formed 6th Airborne Division. Gale had just under a year to organize and train the division before it was due to participate in Operation Tonga, the British airborne landings in Normandy in June 1944. The division was initially understrength due to trained airborne troops being transferred to North Africa and Sicily to replace the losses suffered by the 1st Airborne Division during its operations, but it was soon expanded with the arrival of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, joining the 3rd Parachute Brigade, as well as the formation of the 5th Parachute Brigade and 6th Airlanding Brigade. No British airborne division had ever been deployed into battle entirely through aerial means, and devising plans and formulating tactics for the operation placed a great deal of pressure on Gale. However, Gale's thoroughness paid off when the division successfully landed in Normandy in June 1944, with Gale accompanying the division and landing by glider. For his part in planning and taking part in Operation Tonga, Gale was awarded the DSO on 29 August 1944; in May, he had been promoted to colonel (war-substantive), and also to the temporary rank of major-general. On 5 September the division was taken out of the frontlines and returned to England for rest and recuperation; Gale did not remain with the division, instead being appointed to the headquarters of First Allied Airborne Army. In the last months of the conflict, he was given command of I Airborne Corps. He was promoted to major-general on 7 January 1945, with the acting rank of lieutenant-general from 24 May.

Later life

On 4 December 1946, Gale was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-general. Between 1946-1947 Gale was given command of the 1st Infantry Division when it served in the Middle East, and in 1948 he was appointed General Officer Commanding British Troops in Egypt. Then in 1949 he was transferred and became Director-General of Military Training. He was promoted to general on 6 June 1952 and appointed Commander-in-Chief, Northern Army Group, Allied Land Forces Europe and British Army of the Rhine on 24 September; he held the post until retiring in 1957.

Gale initially retired in 1957, but in September 1958 he was recalled to serve with NATO and replaced Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; he retired permanently in September 1960 after two years in the post and was replaced by General Sir Hugh Stockwell. During the post-war years, Gale also held a number of ceremonial and non-military posts; he was aide-de-camp (general) to the Queen Elizabeth II between 1954–7, Colonel of the Worcestershire Regiment between 1950–61, and Colonel-Commandant of the Parachute Regiment between 1956–67. Gale died at his home in Kingston upon Thames on 29 July 1982, four days after his 86th birthday. His widow, Lady Daphne Gale, subsequently lived in a grace and favour apartment in Hampton Court Palace until she died during a major fire at the palace in March 1986.

Military thinking

Gale addressing the 6th Airborne Division in early June 1944

Gale's approach to military affairs emerged from both his personal history and personality. Gale, a 'tall, bluff, ruddy' individual, with a reputation as 'a bit of a buccaneer' but allegedly possessing a 'hectoring manner and a loud voice', was one of a number of Great War veterans to challenge the military status quo that had led to the terrible losses on the Western Front. Events such as the losses on the Somme heavily influenced Gale's thinking, and he emerged from the war with a suspicion of predominantly firepower-led operations. Looking back, Gale was to remember the 'wonderful panorama' of the infantry successfully advancing using modern infiltration tactics on a clear day in the spring of 1918, contributing to his embracing the interwar manoeuvrist theorists during his time at Staff College. Gale saw a narrative in the sequence of developments from the creation of the new infantry tactics of 1918, through to the tanks and airborne forces of the 1940s, that demonstrated the 'fundamental necessity of mobility on the battlefield', and the importance of surprise at all levels of warfare.

During the Second World War, Gale applied these principles to the development of airborne forces. An advocate of shock manoeuvre with elite forces, Gale stressed extensive training, the use of the latest battlefield technologies and strong personal leadership. For Gale, the quality of one's military forces were as important as their number, and he drew additional lessons on the disproportionate effect that surprise manoeuvre had on a 'demoralised or unprepared enemy', as opposed to a 'well-trained opposition', from the operations of the 6th Division in Normandy. Later in life, Gale examined the issues of war in the nuclear age. Still an advocate of manoeuvre and high-quality forces, Gale was to stress the importance of achieving mobility and flexibility in the face of the Soviet threat, foreshadowing in many ways the evolution of the AirLand battle doctrine of the 1980s.

Honours and awards

• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath - 1954 (KCB - 1953; CB - 2 August 1945)
• Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire - 1950 (OBE: 11 July 1940)
• Distinguished Service Order 31 August 1944
• Military Cross - 1918
• Mention in Despatches - 22 March 1945, 7 January 1949
• Commander of the Legion of Merit (USA) - 16 January 1948 (Officer - 20 June 1944)
• Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur (France) - 28 December 1956
• Croix de Guerre with Palm (France) - 28 December 1956
• Grand Officier de la Couronne (Belgium)

Publications

• With the 6th Airborne Div in Normandy (Sampson Low, Marston & Co, London, 1948)
• Infantry in Modern Battle: Its Organization and Training (Canadian Army Journal 8, no. 1, 1955: 52-61)
• Generalship and the art of Command in this Nuclear Age (RUSI Journal 101, no. 603, 1956: 376-384)
• Call to arms. An autobiography (Hutchinson, London, 1968)
• Great battles of biblical history (Hutchinson, London, 1968)
• The Worcestershire Regiment, the 29th and 36th Regiments of foot (Leo Cooper, London, 1970)
• Kings at arms: The Use and Abuse of power in the Great Kingdoms of the East (Hutchinson, London, 1971)

Bibliography

• Crookenden, Napier (1976). DropZone Normandy: the story of the American and British airborne assault on D Day 1944. London (UK): Ian Allan. OCLC 249433658.
• Dover, Major Victor (1981). The Sky Generals. Cassell. ISBN 0-304-30480-8.
• Farrar-Hockley, Anthony; revised (2004). "Gale, Sir Richard Nelson (1896–1982)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 20 January 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
• Gale, Richard (1948). With the 6th Airborne Division in Normandy. London (UK): Sampson Low. OCLC 4447265.
• Gale, Richard (1955). Infantry in Modern Battle: Its Organization and Training, (Canadian Army Journal 8, no. 1, 1955: 52-61)
• Gale, Richard (1956). Generalship and the art of Command in this Nuclear Age, (RUSI Journal 101, no. 603, 1956: 376-384)
• Gale, Richard (1968). Call to arms: an autobiography. London (UK): Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-086430-1.
• Lovat, Lord (1978). March past : a memoir. London (UK): Weidenfeld and Nicholson. ISBN 0-297-77456-5.
• Mead, Richard (2007). Churchill's Lions: A biographical guide to the key British generals of World War II. Stroud (UK): Spellmount. ISBN 978-1-86227-431-0.