EIGHTH ARMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1944, Page 4

EIGHTH ARMY

NEW COMMANDER APPOINTED GENERAL SIR OLIVER LEESE. ASSOCIATION WITH GENERAL MONTGOMERY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) RUGBY, January 5. Acting-Lieut.-General Sir Oliver Leese, who commanded the Thirtieth Corps with General Montgomery since El Alamein, is Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth Army, states a correspondent at Allied Headquarters in North Africa. General Leese was promoted to his present rank in September, 1942, and went to the Middle East to assume command of the Thirtieth Corps. For his services in France with the B.E.F. he was awarded the C.B.E. In December, 1940, he was promoted MajorGeneral, and two months later was transferred to the command of a division. During the last war he was awarded the D. 5.0., was wounded three times, and was mentioned in despatches twice. General Leese is among the youngest of the Army’s higher commands. 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 in his opoprtunity. He was born 49 years ago, and saw active service on the Western Front in the last war, where he was in the fighting line before his twentieth birthday. He had not intended to make the army his profession but once he 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. He was called back to England in 1940, and took part in the fighting in Belgium and France and later in North Africa and Sicily. 1