Charles Leslie Richardson

General Sir Charles Leslie Richardson, (11 August 1908 – 7 February 1994) was a senior British Army officer who saw service in the Second World War and reached high office in the 1950s.

Charles Leslie Richardson was born in Guernsey on 11 August 1908, the oldest child and only son of Charles William Richardson, a Royal Artillery officer, and his wife, Eveline Adah Wingrove.

He had a younger sister.

While his father was stationed in Mauritius, his mother and the two children lived in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and he became fluent in French.

His early education was at St Ronan's School, and when he left in 1922 he was awarded a scholarship to Wellington College, Berkshire.

Richardson then entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he passed out first and was awarded the King's Medal for the cadet best qualified in military subjects.

A 1928 graduate of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, Richardson was commissioned into the Royal Engineers.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Engineers on 30 August 1928.

This was followed by further engineer training at the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham, Kent, where his instructors included Captain Eric Dorman-Smith, and then two years at Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a first-class honours degree in engineering in the Mathematical Tripos.

He served in British India between 1931 and 1938.

During the Second World War he graduated from the Staff College, Camberley, and served on the staff of the 4th Infantry Division in the Battle of France.

He then went to the Middle East, where he was an instructor in logistics at the Staff College, Haifa, and a staff officer with the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

After graduating from Cambridge in 1931, Richardson was seconded to the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners in British India.

He joined its headquarters (HQ) in Kirkee, where newly-arrived lieutenants were taught Urdu.

He was then posted to Bombay as assistant garrison engineer in the Military Engineering Services, which was responsible for civil engineering works, and was largely staffed by Indian civilians.

After six weeks there he was sent to Mhow, where he enjoyed pigsticking, shooting sandgrouse, and horse riding.

Richardson then became the garrison engineer in Nasirabad, where he attempted, unsuccessfully, to improve the water supply, and was in charge of improvements to the officers' bungalows there.

In 1933 he returned to duty with the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners in Quetta.

After leave in Britain, he returned to India as second in command of a field company in Kirkee.

He was assigned to command a detachment of thirty sappers to Chitral, near the border with Afghanistan.

The unit's annual training program included the construction of a permanent structure; Richardson chose to build a cantilevered cliff gallery roads to improve the track from Drosh to Lowari Pass.

This drew upon the knowledge he had gained at Cambridge.

The required stores had to be ordered six months in advance and carried by porters for 60 mi over a 10,000 ft saddle.

While on this posting he took a preparatory course at Simla for the staff college examination.

Richardson returned to the United Kingdom in 1938, and became the assistant adjutant of the Royal Engineers training battalion at Chatham.After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, he became the adjutant of the I Corps Troops Engineers, a Territorial Army formation from Manchester and Liverpool consisting of three field companies and a field park company that was assigned to the British Expeditionary Force in France.

During the Phony War period it constructed fortifications along the border between France and Belgium.

In January 1940, Richardson was sent to the Staff College, Camberley, for an abbreviated wartime course.

He returned to France on 1 May 1940, where he joined the staff of the 4th Infantry Division as its Deputy Assistant Adjutant General (DAAG), the staff officer responsible for personnel.

On 30 August 1940, Richardson boarded the battleship HMS Valiant (1914), bound for the Middle East.

He arrived at his destination, the Staff College, Haifa, in Palestine, where Dorman-Smith was the commandant and Freddie de Guingand was the chief instructor.

He became the staff officer for plans the headquarters of the Eighth Army in June 1942 and was responsible for planning the deception operation codenamed Operation Bertram.

Promoted to the acting rank of brigadier, he served on the staff of the Eighth Army in the Tunisian campaign and the Allied invasion of Sicily, on that of the US Fifth Army in the Italian campaign, and with that of the 21st Army Group in the campaign in North West Europe in 1944–1945.

After the war Richardson was with the British Control Commission in Berlin from 1945 to 1946 and the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from 1947 to 1948.

He was appointed Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham in 1955 and the General Officer Commanding of the Singapore District in 1958.

He went on to become the first Director of Combat Development at the War Office in 1960 and Director General of Military Training in 1961.

In this latter role he was credited with recognising the significance of the Special Air Service.

In 1963 he became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Northern Command and in 1965 the Quartermaster-General to the Forces.

His final appointment was as Master-General of the Ordnance in 1966 before he retired in 1971.

He was Chief Royal Engineer from 1972 to 1977.

After the Germans attacked on 10 May, the 4th Division became involved first in the advance in Belgium, and then in the retreat that culminated in the Dunkirk evacuation.