Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck

Auchinleck was the son of an army officer and, destined for a military career, was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst. He became an officer in the Indian army and saw service during World War I against Turkish forces in the Middle East. During the Great War, he rocketed through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant colonel by 1917.

Born in Northern Ireland of an Ulster- Scottish family on 21 June 1884, Claude Auchinleck was educated at Wellington College and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, being commissioned in the Indian Army (unattached) in 1903. The following year, he joined the 62nd Punjabis. His entire service during the First World War was spent in the Middle East. Arriving in Egypt in 1914, he moved on to Aden the following year and to Mesopotamia in 1916, where he took part in operations against the Turks before transferring to Kurdistan. His war services brought him brevet promotion to lieutenant-colonel, and the award of the D.S.O., the O.B.E., and the French Croix de Guerre.

After attending the Imperial Defense College in 1927, he was given command of the 1st Battalion, 1st Punjab Regiment in 1929, and the following year became a senior instructor at the Quetta Staff College, Appointed commander of the Peshawar Brigade in 1933, he took part in operations against the Upper Mohmands in that year and again in 1935. From 1936 to 1938, he held the post of Deputy Chief of the Indian General Staff.

Returning to Britain at the beginning of the Second World War, Auchinleck was placed in command of the second Allied expeditionary force, sent to Narvik in northern Norway - an enterprise that augured well but was short-lived, owing to logistic failures and to the impossibility of maintaining prolonged and adequate air support of the ground forces.

For all his experience in mountain warfare, the situation deteriorated rapidly with the build-up of German forces, and the decision was taken to evacuate the British force - an operation skillfully achieved and one that enhanced Auchinleck’s reputation among the British general staff. On his return to England, he was appointed General Officer Commanding Southern Command for a short period before returning to India as Commander-in-Chief, Indian Army.

In July 1941, they ordered Auchinleck to Egypt to succeed General Wavell as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East. Here, after a year’s operations against the Italians (and latterly against the Germans), General Wavell’s forces were critically weak, having been called upon to pursue repeated campaigns throughout the theatre - campaigns which had achieved astonishing success. Axis pressure was increasing against Egypt, however, and the port of Tobruk was besieged when Auchinleck arrived to take up his command.

On 18 November 1941 he launched a new offensive against the still-predominantly Italian forces in the Western Desert, won an important victory at Sidi Rezegh, relieved Tobruk, and in five weeks recaptured Benghazi. Total Axis casualties were about 60,000 compared with 18,000 British, and General Rommel had lost almost 400 tanks and 850 aircraft. However, the dispatch of reinforcements to South East Asia which followed Japanese entry into the War severely weakened the British desert army, while a temporary loss of British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean allowed a rapid reinforcement of the German Afrika Korps.

As a result, the British advance through Cyrenaica was poorly sustained, air superiority was not fully exploited, and supply lines - already critically extended - were badly administered; it was the final blow when the British advanced columns ran against and were held by well-prepared defense lines at El Agheila. An immediate German counterattack caught the British forces off balance, and retreat followed. All the newly won territory was lost, together with large quantities of stores and equipment.

Auchinleck and General Ritchie (whom Auchinleck had placed in command of the Eighth Army in place of General Alan Cunningham) crammed a line of resistance at Gazala, and this temporarily held against the advancing Afrika Korps. After some months of quiescence, Rommel attacked once more with overwhelming strength, employing superior tanks and the highly mobile and deadly 88mm general-purpose gun, which annihilated the critically vulnerable tanks with which the British forces were equipped. Having previously lost so much manpower and equipment, the Eighth Army was again hurled back; Tobruk fell, and the whole of northern Egypt - and the vital Suez Canal - was threatened.

The Battle of the Gazala-Bir Hakeim line was almost a disaster, and only the heroic defense of the Free French on the Allied left flank at Bir Hakeim prevented the entire Eighth Army from being enveloped and destroyed. As it was, the delay so dearly bought not only allowed much of the Allied strength to be withdrawn, but critically exhausted Rommel’s superb Afrika Korps.

Between 14 and 30 June, the Allies fell back to the Egyptian border, at which point Auchinleck assumed personal command of the situation and rallied his troops for a bold delaying action at Mersa Matruh; he then retired to a strongly fortified line anchored on the Alam-el-Halfa ridge between El Alamein and the Qattara Depression, only sixty miles west of Alexandria. Here the Eighth Army stood and fought off probing attacks by the critically extended Italo-German forces.

It was at this point that Churchill replaced the generals in command of the Allied forces in Egypt: Auchinleck was succeeded by Alexander and Ritchie by Montgomery.

Ineptitude there had been in North Africa, though Churchill was quick to exonerate Auchinleck. Most British commanders could not counter the brilliance of the German commander Erwin Rommel, whose aptitude for desert warfare was second to none - until eventually he was matched against such “safe” generals as Alexander and Montgomery. Remembering that the British desert army had never enjoyed a sustained build-up of men and really modern equipment, and had been decimated by demands from Greece, Crete, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and the Far East, it was to Auchinleck’s lasting credit that he had achieved some successes during the winter of 1941-2 and that he halted Rommel’s advance at Alam-el-Halfa.

His military prestige thus relatively undamaged, Auchinleck was again appointed Commander-in-Chief in India - a post he held until 1946. One cannot but remark that this period of his career was probably that in which he contributed his greatest services to the British cause. India was in a ferment of nationalist and factional dissatisfaction, not fully understood by certain British wartime politicians.

It was Auchinleck’s knowledge of the Indian religious structure and the political aims of such men as the Hindu nationalist leader Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi that won the confidence of the Indian Army, and made possible the relatively smooth reorganization of the forces that were to confront and defeat the Japanese in north-east India and Burma in 1944-45.

After the War, the “Auk”, as he was popularly and universally known, was promoted Field Marshal. Although appointed to command the combined force operating in the Punjab in 1947, he retired shortly after the declaration of Indian independence on 15 August that year. He died in Morocco on 23 March 1981.