- John Sydney Lethbridge
Major-General John Sydney Lethbridge CB CBE MC (
11 December 1897 –11 August 1961 ) was a Britishsoldier .Early life
The son of Lt-Col. Sydney Lethbridge, OBE RA, Lethbridge was educated at
Gresham's School , Holt,Uppingham School ,Leicestershire , theRoyal Military Academy, Woolwich , andJesus College, Cambridge . [http://www.xreferplus.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=6170382 LETHBRIDGE, Major-General John Sydney] at "Who Was Who 1897-2006" online at xreferplus.com (accessed 4 November 2007)]Career
He was commissioned into the
Corps of Royal Engineers in 1915 and saw active service on the Western Front from 1916 to 1917 with 123 Field Company, Royal Engineers and 38 (Welsh) Division:Battle of the Somme , 1916; inIndia , 1917, serving as temporary Captain with a field company ofKing George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners ; then served with theAden Frontier Force for operations in southern Arabia from 1917 to 1918.He commanded, as acting Major, a Company of King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners in the
Third Afghan War ,Afghanistan andNorth West Frontier ,India , from 1919 to 1922.He was an undergraduate at
Jesus College, Cambridge from 1922 to 1924, then served inIndia , again with King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners, atRoorkee andRawalpindi ; saw active service in theKajuri Plain ,Peshawar , againstAfridi raiders, 1930; graduated from Staff College,Quetta , India, 1932, and returned to postings in the UK, including Chatham, Kent, 1933-1935, and General Staff Headquarters Northern Command, York, 1935-1936.Lethbridge served in the
Second World War , first withBritish Expeditionary Force , France, 1939; commanded 220 Lethbridge Military Mission, to the USA, India, South West Pacific and Australia to study tactics and equipment required to defeat Japan in the Far East, 1943-1944; Chief of Staff, 14 Army,Burma , 1944-1945; Chief of Intelligence, Control Commission for Germany andBritish Army of the Rhine , 1945-1948; Major General, 1948; Commandant of theCivil Defence Staff College , 1949-1952, and Director of Civil Defence for the South West Region (Bristol), from September 1955 to October 1960.Lethbridge retired to Bondleigh, near
North Tawton , inDevon , but died in August 1961, less than a year after his retirement.Family
In 1925, Lethbridge married Katharine Greville Maynard, the daughter of Sir John Maynard, KCIE CSI, and they had one son and two daughters.
Honours
*
Military Cross , 1919
*CBE, 1942
*Companion of theOrder of the Bath , 1946
*Commander, US Legion of Merit, 1946References
* [http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/cats/lethbridge/le50-0.shtml#BIO Lethbridge biography] at web site of
King's College London
* [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=555&inst_id=21 LETHBRIDGE, Maj Gen John Sydney (1897-1961)] at Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.