Post by Diarist on Sept 14, 2014 14:45:39 GMT 1
Early life and the Great War
Born 7 Sep 1895 in India, Horrocks is the only son of Colonel Sir William Horrocks, a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Educated at Uppingham School, an English public school, he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1913. His score was sixth-lowest of the 167 successful applicants for cadetships—even after the addition of 200 bonus points for an Officer Training Corps (OTC) certificate, which not all the other candidates had. An unpromising student, he might not have received a commission at all but for the outbreak of the Great War.
Commissioned on 8 August 1914 into the 1st Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, Second Lieutenant Horrocks joined the British Expeditionary Force's retreat following its baptism of fire at the Battle of Mons. On 21 October, at the Battle of Armentières, his platoon was surrounded, and he was wounded and taken prisoner. Incarcerated in a military hospital, he was repeatedly interrogated by his German captors, who believed that the British Army were using expanding bullets in contravention of the 1899 Hague Convention. Horrocks' captors refused to change his clothes or sheets, and denied him and a fellow officer basic amenities. Both had temporarily lost the use of their legs, and were forced to crawl to the toilet, which caused Horrocks' wounds to become infected. However, conditions improved after his discharge and transfer to a prisoner of war camp. On his way to the camp, Horrocks befriended his German escort — he attributed their rapport to the mutual respect that front-line troops share. He was promoted to lieutenant on 18 December 1914, despite being in enemy hands, and often tried to escape, once coming within 500 yards (460 m) of the Dutch border before being recaptured. He was eventually placed in a compound for Russian officers, in the hope that the language barrier would hinder his escape attempts; Horrocks used the time to learn the Russian language.
Post-war period
Russia
In 1919 Horrocks was posted to Russia as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. After landing at Vladivostok on 19 April, he was taken to British headquarters and briefed. The White Army under Admiral Kolchak, with the help of released Czechoslovak Legion prisoners, had driven the Red Army out of Siberia. However, Kolchak's Czech troops were returning home, and the British military contingent was urgently trying to replace them with Russians. To accomplish this, the British had just two infantry battalions and two small administrative missions, one charged with training and arming the Russians with British war-surplus equipment, and the other with improving the White Army's communications.
Horrocks' first task, along with a party of 13 British officers and 30 other ranks, was to guard a train delivering 27 carriages of shells to the White Army in Omsk, 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away on the Trans-Siberian Railway.[27] The journey took more than a month, and as the only party member fluent in Russian, Horrocks had to deal with many of the difficulties they encountered. At every station, he had to ward off station masters intent on acquiring the cars. While stopped in Manchuli, the British officers' presence provoked a duel between two Cossack officers. Horrocks accepted an invitation to act as a second, but the pair were arrested before the duel could take place. However, he managed to defuse the situation before it came to trial, by claiming his faulty Russian had been the cause of the misunderstanding. The train eventually arrived in Omsk on 20 May, with a full cargo.
His next assignment was in Yekaterinburg in the Urals, where he was appointed second in command of a training school for non-commissioned officers attached to the Anglo-Russian Brigade. He found this post frustrating, having to dismiss nearly a third of his initial cadre on medical grounds, and struggling to get supplies and support from the White Army authorities. Despite this, he developed a rapport with his men and an admiration for the Russian soldier.
Although British forces were ordered home shortly afterwards, Horrocks and another officer, George Hayes, remained to advise the First Siberian Army. The White Army was in retreat, and Horrocks joined them as they fell back to Vladivostok, 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away. He was captured by the Red Army on 7 January 1919, in the town of Krasnoyarsk, and spent 10 months as a prisoner, narrowly surviving severe typhus. The British government negotiated a prisoner release, and Horrocks left Russia on 29 October, returning home on the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Delhi.
Back home
Horrocks rejoined his regiment, based in Germany with the British Army of the Rhine, and followed it to Ireland, then embroiled in the Anglo-Irish War. There his duties included searching for arms and dealing with ambushes and road-blocks, which he called "a most unpleasant form of warfare". This was followed by a short period in Silesia, to deal with tensions between the Polish and German populations.
On his return to Britain, Horrocks took up the modern pentathlon. He competed successfully in army tournaments, and was picked for the British Olympic team for the 1924 Paris Olympics, where he finished 19th out of 38. Horrocks spent the remainder of the inter-war years in postings that included adjutant for the 9th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment of the Territorial Army (1926—1930); student at the Staff College, Camberley (1931—1932); Staff Captain at the War Office (1934—1935); and instructor at the Staff College. He received a brevet majority in 1935. In April 1935 he was assigned to TRADOC.
Source: Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Horrocks