General Sir Richard Nelson "Windy" Gale, (25 June 1896 – 29 July 1982) was a senior officer in the British Army who served in both world wars. In the First World War he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918 whilst serving as a junior officer in the Machine Gun Corps. During the Second World War he served with 1st Parachute Brigade and then the 6th Airborne Division during the D-Day landings and Operation Tonga in 1944. After the end of the conflict, Gale remained in the army and eventually, in 1958, succeeded Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Early life
Gale was born on 25 June 1896 in London, England, to Wilfred Gale, a merchant from Hull, and his wife Helen Webber Ann, daughter of Joseph Nelson, of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. The early years of his life were spent in Australia and New Zealand due to his father's gaining employment in insurance, but the Gale family returned to England in 1906. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, a foundation school in the City of London, gaining an average academic record but becoming a prolific reader. After this, he attended further education at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. For a time, he was a boarder at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon.
When Gale left Aldenham he wanted to become a British Army officer in the Royal Artillery, but did not possess the academic qualifications or physical grades required for entry into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Instead Gale followed in his father's footsteps and gained employment as an insurance agent, but he rapidly grew to dislike the job; determined to enter the British Army, he attended regular physical training classes and studied hard to improve his academic grades.
First World War
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Gale, only recently turned 18, was still below the medical standards required for a recruit and failed to join a Territorial Force unit in London. He finally gained entry to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in the summer of 1915 and was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment, "the regiment of my choice", as a second lieutenant on 22 December. When Gale joined the regiment, he put his name forward for a course on training with machine guns and was accepted, being transferred to the Machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham, Lincolnshire.
Appointed to the MGC on 13 March 1916, in short order he was posted to the Western Front.
Gale was posted, in the summer of 1916, to the 164th Machine Gun Company, which was in support of the 164th (North Lancashire) Brigade of the 55th (West Lancashire) Division, a first-line formation of the Territorial Force (TF). With his company, he fought in the Battle of the Somme and, towards the end of the year, served in the Ypres Salient. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 1 November 1916, and to the substantive rank on 1 July 1917. He was next involved in the Capture of Wytschaete in June 1917 but was not involved in the Passchendaele offensive, as he was suffering from both mental and physical exhaustion, and was sent to England on leave, and diagnosed with pyorrhoea. He returned to service in January 1918, although now serving with the 126th Machine Gun Company of the 126th (East Lancashire) Brigade, part of the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division. Among the fellow officers in his new company was Major Edwin Flavell, who was to serve in Gales' later career. On 23 February the company merged into the 42nd Battalion, MGC. It was during his service as a subaltern in France that he won the Military Cross (MC). During the German spring offensive launched by the German Army in mid-March 1918, Gale was awarded his MC for 'conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty'. The citation for the MC reads:
Soon promoted to captain, Gale continued to serve on the Western Front, taking part in the Hundred Days Offensive, until the end of the war on 11 November 1918.