Alfred Dudley Ward

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Sir Dudley Ward
Deputy Lieutenant of Suffolk
Hon. Colonel University Training Corps (Liverpool) (1951–1957)[2][3]
Colonel Commandant, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (1958–1963)[4][5]
Colonel, King's Regiment (Liverpool) (1957)[6]

Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine
, retiring as a full general in 1965.

Early life and military career

Dudley Ward was born on 27 January 1905 in Avenue Road,

Staff College, Quetta in 1935, where Bernard Montgomery was one of his instructors. In 1937, Ward was promoted to captain,[12] transferring to the King's Regiment (Liverpool) for an appropriate vacancy.[8][13] In February 1939 he was seconded to India for staff service as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3),[14][15] but was recalled to London in July.[16]

Second World War

Service in the United Kingdom

By the outbreak of the

Second World War in September 1939, Ward was serving as a GSO2 in the Directorate of Military Intelligence at the War Office in London.[17] In May 1940 Ward was appointed as an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley, before returning to the War Office a year later. In late 1941 he was selected for command and was posted to lead the 43rd (Wessex) Reconnaissance Regiment (43 Recce), previously the 5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, initially the reconnaissance unit of the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division, a Territorial Army (TA) formation, and then, from November 1941, of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, another TA unit. The division, then commanded by Major General Charles Allfrey succeeded in March 1942 by Major General Ivor Thomas, was serving in Kent under XII Corps, then commanded byLieutenant General James Gammell, itself serving under South-Eastern Command, under Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. Under Montgomery numerous large-scale exercises became the order of the day, most notable among them Exercise Tiger in May 1942.[18]

Ward remained with 43 Recce until July 1942 when he became

3rd, 43rd (Wessex), 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Divisions under command, participated in numerous large-scale exercises, most notably in Exercise Spartan in March 1943, the largest military exercise held in the United Kingdom. Stopford appears to have formed a high opinion of Ward, as he recommended him for command in the field, which saw him depart for the Mediterranean in September 1943.[18]

Italy and Greece

In late September 1943 Ward exchanged jobs with Brigadier Roy Urquhart to take command of the 231st Brigade Group while Urquhart became BGS XII Corps, which had seen recent action in the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). However, within a week of arriving he was ordered to exchange jobs once more, and assumed command of the 17th Infantry Brigade which, strangely, Stopford, his corps commander in England, had commanded in France in 1940. The brigade was one of three which formed part of Major General Gerard Bucknall's 5th Infantry Division, which Ward led in the early stages of the Italian campaign as part of the British Eighth Army, commanded by Montgomery.[18]

The brigade saw action during the Eighth Army's advance from Foggia, notably on the

Moro River in late 1943, before the 5th Division, initially under Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey's V Corps, was, due to a lack of progress on the Eighth Army's front, switched to Italy's western seaboard, on the left flank of Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery's British X Corps, which itself formed the left wing of the US Fifth Army on the Winter Line (also known as the Gustav Line) in early January 1944.[18] Ward's brigade, as part of the First Battle of Monte Cassino, conducted an amphibious crossing of the Garigliano river in mid-January and was involved in heavy fighting until the end of the month.[19]

In early March the 5th Division, now under Major General Philip Gregson-Ellis, was relieved by elements of the newly-arrived US 88th Division and moved to the Anzio beachhead to relieve the exhausted British 56th Division, which had fought alongside the 5th Division during First Cassino, with Ward's brigade relieving the 56th Division's 168th Brigade on 9 March. Ward's 17th Brigade, now on the defensive, was involved in further heavy fighting in "The Wadis" on the beachheads' left flank. Conditions at Anzio became more alike to the trench warfare which had consumed so much of the fighting on the Western Front during the First World War.[19] Due to his excellent record of service so far in Italy, Ward was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in April 1944.[20]

It was likely this exemplary record which resulted in his next appointment. Given the

General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 4th Infantry Division, one of the four pre-war Regular Army divisions.[8] This made Ward, at the time, one of the youngest division commanders in the British Army (only George Roberts, James Cassels, and Richard Hull being younger). The division, composed of the 10th, 12th and 28th Infantry Brigades, along with supporting divisional troops, had only recently arrived in Italy from Egypt, where it had been refitting since the end of the Tunisian campaign in mid-May 1943 and had to be rapidly prepared and brought to peak fitness.[19]

The division, serving as part of Lieutenant General Sidney Kirkman's XIII Corps, had recently arrived in Italy to reinforce the Eighth Army and was assigned a major role in the forthcoming offensive that was intended to finally break through the Gustav Line. Together with the 8th Indian Infantry Division, the 4th's role was to create several bridgeheads across the Gari river (wrongly referred to as the Rapido in contemporary sources)[21] in the Fourth and final Battle of Monte Cassino the following month, where Captain Richard Wakeford of the 2/4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, of the 28th Brigade, was awarded the division's first and only Victoria Cross (VC) of the war. After successfully completing its task, the division, after having sustained heavy casualties, was rested until late June when it rejoined the front line on the Trasimene Line.[19]

In August the division, now serving as part of Lieutenant General

Communist partisans opposed to the new provisional government.[22] By mid-January order was restored and in April 1945 Ward handed over command of the 4th Division to Major General Colin Callander, where he became chief of staff to Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie, the British commander in Greece.[22]

For his services in Italy Ward was appointed a

Companion of the Order of the Bath in July of the same year.[24] He also received the Legion of Merit (Degree of Commander) from the United States for his service to the Allied cause.[25]

Senior command

General Sir Dudley Ward as Governor of Gibraltar.

After the war, having demonstrated in the previous five years high competence as both a field commander and staff officer,

Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1953 New Year Honours.[27] He returned to Britain in 1953 as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff,[8] relinquishing the post in October 1956.[28]

The grave of General Sir Dudley Ward in the churchyard of St Mary's, Dennington, Suffolk.

Ward returned to Germany in January 1957 as Commander-in-Chief of

Queen Elizabeth II.[8]

Ward became

Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1962.[39]

Ward retired from the army in 1965.

Colonel Commandant of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and Colonel of the King's Regiment.[27]

References

  1. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50667. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ "No. 39179". The London Gazette (Supplement). 20 March 1951. p. 1561.
  3. ^ "No. 40995". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 February 1957. p. 870.
  4. ^ "No. 41331". The London Gazette (Supplement). 7 March 1958. p. 1587.
  5. ^ "No. 42920". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 February 1963. p. 1401.
  6. ^ "No. 41034". The London Gazette (Supplement). 26 March 1957. p. 1945.
  7. ^ "No. 33462". The London Gazette. 1 February 1929. p. 772.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
  9. ^ "No. 33827". The London Gazette. 20 May 1932. p. 3280.
  10. ^ "No. 33798". The London Gazette. 12 February 1932. p. 954.
  11. ^ "No. 34033". The London Gazette. 16 March 1934. p. 1780.
  12. ^ "No. 34374". The London Gazette. 23 February 1937. p. 1256.
  13. ^ a b Mead 2007, p. 469.
  14. ^ "No. 34596". The London Gazette. 7 February 1939. p. 864.
  15. ^ "No. 34610". The London Gazette. 24 March 1939. p. 2015.
  16. ^ "No. 34708". The London Gazette. 13 October 1939. p. 6874.
  17. ^ Mead 2007, p. 469−470.
  18. ^ a b c d Mead 2007, p. 470.
  19. ^ a b c d e Mead 2007, p. 471.
  20. ^ "No. 36456". The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 April 1944. p. 1587.
  21. ^ 1944: la battaglia di S.Angelo in Theodice e la confusione tra i fiumi Rapido e Gari Archived 17 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine, 1944: the Battle of St. Angelo in Theodice and the Confusion between Rapido and Gari rivers.
  22. ^ a b c Mead 2007, p. 472.
  23. ^ "No. 37039". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 April 1945. p. 2067.
  24. ^ "No. 37161". The London Gazette (Supplement). 3 July 1945. p. 3490.
  25. ^ "No. 38288". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 May 1948. p. 2917.
  26. ^ "No. 37986". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 1947. p. 2711.
  27. ^ a b "No. 39732". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1952. p. 7.
  28. ^ "No. 40893". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 October 1956. p. 5615.
  29. ^ "No. 40968". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 January 1957. p. 144.
  30. ^ "No. 40992". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 February 1957. p. 799.
  31. ^ "No. 41923". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 January 1960. p. 249.
  32. ^ "No. 42022". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 April 1960. p. 3111.
  33. ^ "No. 42714". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 June 1962. p. 5109.
  34. ^ "No. 41089". The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 June 1957. p. 3369.
  35. ^ "No. 41589". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1958. p. 2.
  36. ^ "No. 41567". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 December 1958. p. 7497.
  37. ^ "No. 42526". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 November 1961. p. 8689.
  38. ^ "No. 42711". The London Gazette. 22 June 1962. p. 5018.
  39. ^ "No. 42722". The London Gazette. 3 July 1962. p. 5305.
  40. ^ "No. 43809". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 November 1965. p. 10427.
  41. ^ "No. 44569". The London Gazette. 19 April 1968. p. 4527.

Bibliography
Military offices
Preceded by GOC 4th Infantry Division
1944–1945 		Succeeded by
Honorary titles
Preceded by Colonel of the King's Regiment (Liverpool)
1947–1957 		Succeeded by
Military offices
Preceded by Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley
1948–1951 		Succeeded by
New command GOC 1st (British) Corps
1951–1953 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff
1953–1956 		Succeeded by
Preceded by C-in-C British Army of the Rhine
1957–1960 		Succeeded by
Sir James Cassels
Government offices
Preceded by Governor of Gibraltar
1962–1965 		Succeeded by
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