William Peyton

William Peyton (left) with Vice Admiral Reginald Bacon , 1917

Sir William Eliot Peyton KCB , KCVO , DSO ( 7 May 1866 - 14 November 1931 in London ) was a British Army officer, most recently a general .

Life

Peyton was born the son of officer John Peyton, who was Colonel in command of the 7th Dragoon Guards from 1871 to 1876 . He was trained at Brighton College and should then go to Sandhurst , but failed the entrance examination. He was therefore accepted into his father's former regiment in 1885 with the rank of ordinary soldier and was only granted his lieutenant's license in 1887. In 1889 he married Mabel Gage († 1901), the daughter of General Edward Thomas Gage and granddaughter of the 4th Viscount Gage . In 1896 he joined the 15th The King's Hussars. Seconded to the Egyptian army, he took part in the Dongola expedition and the subsequent Nile campaign . For this he received the Distinguished Service Order and other medals and was Mentioned in dispatches . In 1900 he went to South Africa, where the Second Boer War had begun at the end of 1899 , and served here for six months with the rank of lieutenant colonel in Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry , until illness forced him to return to England.

After completing the course at Staff College Camberley , Peyton was given command of the 15th Hussars in 1903, which he held until 1907, and was promoted to Colonel in October of the latter year. He then went to British India as Assistant Quartermaster General and commanded the Meerut Cavalry Brigade from 1908 to 1912 . At the Delhi Durbar of 1911 he acted as the Delhi Herald and King of Arms for the new King and Emperor George V. From July 1912 until the beginning of the First World War , he was the Military Secretary of the Commander in Chief in India, General Sir Garrett O ' Moore Creagh .

After the start of the war he returned to England, where he took over the 2nd Mounted Division of the Territorial Force at the end of August 1914 . With this he took part in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 . After the evacuation, he commanded the Western Frontier Force of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from January to May 1916 in the campaign against the Senussi . He was then called to the Western Front to serve as military secretary under the local Commander in Chief Douglas Haig . In 1917, he was the king during a visit to the front as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order for beaten knight . In the spring of 1918 he was in command of the Reserve Army (the remains of the Fifth Army , which was badly hit by the German Michael Offensive ), and then briefly the X Corps , which also did not take part in combat during this time. In early July he was given command of the 40th Division , which he led during the Hundred Days Offensive in Flanders. He remained their commander until he became commander of the cavalry in the British Army of the Rhine in March 1919 .

Peyton was again in India from 1920 to 1922 as commander of the 3rd (Meerut) Division in the United Provinces District. He then became a military secretary in the War Ministry until 1926 . His last post was that of General Officer Commanding in the Scottish Command from 1926 to 1930. He died unexpectedly in November 1931 in the London Army and Navy Club and was buried in Brompton Cemetery .

Peyton had been the 15th Hussars regiment chief since 1916 . After the death of his first wife, with whom he had a daughter, he married again in 1903 and from this marriage had a son who achieved the rank of brigadier .

literature

• Ian Frederick William Beckett, Steven J. Corvi: Haig's Generals. Casemate, 2006, Appendix 1, p. 209.

Web links

Commons : Sir William Peyton  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• William Peyton on the University of Birmingham's Lions led by donkeys project pages
• William Peyton on angloboerwar.com