Alfred Reade Godwin-Austen

Sir Alfred Reade Godwin-Austen KCSI , CB , OBE , MC (born April 17, 1889 in Frensham , Surrey , † March 20, 1963 in Maidenhead , Berkshire ) was a British officer in the British Army who served his country in both World Wars and reached the rank of general .

Life

Born the younger son and one of five children of Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Godwin-Austen, Godwin-Austen was educated at St Lawrence College at Ramsgate and the Royal Military College Sandhurst . His great-grandfather Sir Henry Thomas Godwin had commanded the British-Indian troops in the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852-1853), the topographer Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen was his uncle.

Godwin-Austen was inducted into the South Wales Borderers Regiment in 1909 . During the First World War he served in Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia and was awarded the Military Cross . From 1923 to 1925 he attended Staff College Camberley and then served in the War Office , RMC Sandhurst and in Egypt . In 1927 his work The Staff and the Staff College was published.

From 1936 to 1937 Godwin-Austen commanded the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry , then he became head of the British military mission in the Kingdom of Egypt. In December 1938 he was given command of the 14th Infantry Brigade stationed in the Middle East , with which he was involved in the suppression of the Arab uprising in the League of Nations mandate for Palestine . A few days before the outbreak of World War II , in August 1939 he succeeded Bernard Montgomery as commander of the higher-level 8th Infantry Division . After the division was dissolved in February 1940, he was tasked with setting up the 2nd (African) Division (later 12th (East African) Division ), the main component of which was the King's African Rifles and those from British East Africa on the East Africa campaign from 1940 to 1941 participated. Before he formally assumed his command, he was summoned to British Somaliland in August 1940 , which was attacked by the superior forces of the Italians at the time , and arranged for a scheduled retreat to Berbera , from where the troops were evacuated to Aden . Prime Minister Winston Churchill was angry about this almost non-fighting abandonment of a colony - the losses of the British were few in number - and developed an aversion to Godwin-Austen, whom he wanted to suspend and put before a commission of inquiry. This was averted by the intervention of Archibald Wavell , then Commander in Chief in the Middle East . Godwin-Austen took over the 2nd (African) Division in September 1940 and led it under the command of Alan Cunningham in February 1941 across the Italian-Somaliland border . After completing the main operations in East Africa, he passed the command to his successor Charles Christopher Fowkes in August 1941 .

His next command was that of the XIII Corps (formerly Western Desert Force , now part of the Eighth Army ) in North Africa, which he took over from Noel Beresford-Peirse in September 1941 . During Operation Crusader , which began in November 1941 , he expressed vigorous protest over the decision of Commander-in-Chief Cunningham to end the offensive without achieving the objective of lifting the siege of Tobruk . Cunningham was relieved in November 1941 and the offensive under his successor Claude Auchinleck was successfully led to the liberation of Tobruk and on to El Agheila . In January 1942, Godwin-Austen's corps was threatened by counter-attacks by the Panzer Army Africa . He consulted with his new superior, General Neil Ritchie , and asked for permission to withdraw from Benghazi , which the latter also gave. A little later, under the influence of Churchill, Ritchie changed his mind and exposed Godwin-Austen. This was followed by further decisions by Ritchie, which were hardly acceptable to Godwin-Austen, and after Benghazi's loss at the end of January, Godwin-Austen sent a replacement request to Auchinleck on February 2, which he hesitantly accepted.

At Churchill's insistence, Godwin-Austen received no new command, despite the advocacy of several superiors, and was deported to a post as Director of Research in the War Office. In 1943 he became Vice Quartermaster General in the War Office and in 1945 Quartermaster General, later chief administrative officer, of the India Command in Delhi (under Auchinleck). He was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India in 1946 and retired from active service the following year with the rank of general. In retirement, Godwin-Austen was regiment chief of the South Wales Borderers from 1950 to 1954 . He died in 1963 at the age of 73.

Web links

• Career data and finding aids in the Liddell Hart Military Archives , King's College London

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Richard Mead: Churchill's Lions: A biographical guide to the key British generals of World War II. Spellmount, Stroud 2007, ISBN 978-1-86227-431-0 , p. 169.
2. ↑ NS Nash: Strafer Desert General: The Life and Killing of Lieutenant General WHE God CB CBE DSO MC. Pen and Sword, 2013, p. 163 f.