ARMY APPOINTMENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1940, Page 5

ARMY APPOINTMENTS

ARMOURED CORPS COMMANDER [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, Dec. 9. The King has approved the appointment of General H. R. L. G. Alexander to be General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Command, and of Major-General G. Le Q. Martel to be commander of the Royal Armoured Corps. General Alexander will succeed General Auchinleck, who has been appointed Commander-in-Chief in India. He was in command of the B.E.F. during the last days of the evacuation from Dunkirk. He is 49 years of age.

The appointment of commander of the Royal Armoured Corps is a new appointment, and Major-General Martel is particularly fitted for it. He served on the staff of the Tank Corps in France for 18 months in 1917/18, was assistant-Director of Mechanisation at the War Office from October 1936, to December 1937. and thereafter was deputy-director of the same branch until February last year. He is 51 years of age. The creation of such an appointment marks the reaching of a definite stage in the policy of rapidly increasing the armoured strength of the Army, to which the military authorities have been devoting themselves.