THE EIGHTH ARMY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1944, Page 5

THE EIGHTH ARMY

LT.-GEN. SIR OLIVER LEESE Rec. 12.50 p.m. RUGBY, January 5. Acting Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, who commanded the 30th Corps with General Montgomery since El Alamein, has been appointed to succeed General Montgomery as Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth Army, states a correspondent at Allied Headquarters in North Africa.

Lieut-General Leese is among the youngest of the Army's higher commanders. He has made an enviable reputation during the past four years; having the gift of being in the right place at the right time, and having always risen to the highest of his opportunity. He was born 49 years ago in Hertfordshire. From Eton he joined the Coldstream Guards through a special reserve, and saw active service on. the Western Front, where he was in the fighting line before his twentieth birthday, was awarded the D.5.0., wounded three times, and twice mentioned in dispatches. He did not intend to make the Army his profession, but once he had tried soldiering there was no longer any question about his career. He quickly proved himself an excellent regimental officer and an equally good instructor^

At the outbreak of the present war he' was chief instructor at the Staff College at Quetta, India, with the rank of Colonel. Called back to England in 1940, he was given an infantry brigade. A month later he was sent to France as acting Major-General to take up the duties of Deputy Chief of the General Staff at the General Headquarters of the B.E.F. He was just in time for the* rapid advance through Belgium tothe River Dyle, and the subsequent fighting and the withdrawal to Dunkirk. He was mentioned in dispatches and received the C.B.E. He was selected to command the 30th Corps in the Middle East, and was Almost ready for- the knock-out blow of El Alamein. General Leese arrived in Egypt in September, 1942. In October his corps went into the attack. For twelve days the guns, infantry, and armour—Englishmen, Scotsmen, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, and Indians, commanded by Lieut-General Leese fought their way forward, crushing furious counter-at-tacks. By the morning of November 4, the Axis armies were broken. Mareth, Wadi Akrit, and Enfidaville were other battles in which General Leese's 30th Corps showed again skill, dash, arid tenacity which have become famous. In July they-landed in Sicily and fought their way up the eastern flank of the island past Catania to Mt. 'Etna and Messina. —8.0. W.