GREAT SOLDIER DEAD.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 140, 15 May 1936, Page 9

GREAT SOLDIER DEAD.

PASSING OF LORD ALLENBY. REMARKABLE CAREER. Received Mav 15, 9.10 a.m. LONDON, May 14. Viscount Edmund Allenby, G.C.8., G.C.M.G., the famous British wartime cavalry leader, is dead. He was aged 75. Lord Allenby was found dead in his study by a servant shortly after he had been talking to Lady Allenby. SPLENDID TRIBUTES. Received Mav 15, 12.20 p.m. LONDON, May 14. Mr Lloyd George paid a tribute to the lato Lord Allenby as one of the most successful war generals. His name was recorded in history as the victor in the last and most triumphant of the crusades. Lord Millie said ho was a wonderful strategist, a great lender, and a great gentleman, with a lovable character. The career of Lord Allenby was one of vivid contrasts. As a young cavalry officer he won distinction in the Boer War; as a divisional conigiander in France he suffered military reverses, and humiliation ; as commander ill Palestine he refought the battles of the Bible and drove the Turk from the Holy Land, and, after the war, he showed his talents as a diplomat and administrator. Born on April 23, 1861, Lord Allenby early decided on a military career. At the age of 21 he joined the Inniskillen Dragoons, to which he was gazetted as a lieutenant. Much of the early part of his army career he spent in South Africa. Among the engagements in which he fought at that tune wei'o the Bechuana Expedition of 188485, and the Zululand operations of 1888. Subsequently lie returned with his regiment to England, and passed through the Staff College there. In 1896 he married Miss Adelaide Mabel Chapman. South Africa again saw Lord Allenby in 1899, when he went out as a squadron-leader, and participated in the important cavalry operations by which Kimberley was iolieved, in the battle of Paardeberg and in the’advance conducted by Lord Roberts to Pretoria and into the eastern Transvaal. As a column commander in tlie later phases of the South Atrican War lie commenced to establish the brilliant reputation which lie subsequently achieved. For his services there he was promoted brevet lieuten-ant-colonel and colonel, and was awarded the C’.B. . From 1902 to 1905 he commanded the Fifth Lancers, aiul lor the next lour years lie commanded a cavalry brigade. In 1909 he was promoted maTor-general. It was as an inspector of cavalry, to which position he had been appointed in 1909, that lie went to France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, and he was in charge of a cavalry dli ision. He took part in the now historic retreat from Mons, the later advance to the Aisne, and the first Battie of Ypres, and subsequently shared in the operations at the Somme. In June, 1917 he was selected to command the troops in Egypt and Palestine, for which he was promoted to general. Ills arrangements resulted in victory, and his troops occupied Damascus and Beirut, and Palestine and all Syria were in the hands of the Allies. Mis billliant victories were recognised by his being given the G.C.8., and, after the war, lie was promoted Field-Marshal, raised to the peerage as Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, and awarded a grant of £50,000. His powers of organisation, coupled with his knowledge of Egyptian conditions, resulted in his appointment in 1919 to the High Commissionership of that troubled country, which office he held to the advancement of British prestige and to the betterment of Egypt itself until 1925.