Montagu Stopford

Early life and First World War

Born on 16 November 1892 in Hanover Square, London, Montagu Stopford was the son of Colonel Sir Lionel Stopford, and the great-grandson of James Stopford, 3rd Earl of Courtown. His mother was Mabel Georgina Emily, daughter of George Alexander Mackenzie. He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own) on 20 September 1911, His fellow graduates included Edward Williams, also of the Rifle Brigade, John Fullerton Evetts, Leslie Gordon Phillips, Eric Paytherus Nares, and Kenneth Anderson, all of whom would, like Stopford himself, become general officers. He was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the regiment, then serving in Rawalpindi, India, until shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

In late October Stopford, by now a lieutenant, arrived with his battalion in Liverpool, having left India the month before. The battalion, now serving as part of the 25th Brigade of the 8th Division, arrived on the Western Front in early November. After serving with his battalion throughout some of the most intense battles of 1915, including the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, Stopford, promoted on 5 July 1915 to captain, became a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3) with the 56th (1st London) Division, a Territorial Force (TF) formation, on 10 June 1916. On 6 December 1916 he became the brigade major of the 56th Division's 167th (1st London) Brigade, a post which he held throughout 1917 until 25 March 1918. He ended the war with the substantive rank of major, and had been twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross.

Between the wars

Remaining in the army during the difficult interwar period, spent mainly on regimental duties, Stopford served in the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), as Commanding Officer (CO) of the 53rd Battalion, Rifle Brigade. He then returned to England, where he attended the Staff College, Camberley, from 1923 to 1924. His fellow students there included Gordon Macready, Dudley Johnson, Douglas Pratt, John Smyth, Roderic Petre, Arthur Percival, Frederick Pile, Henry Verschoyle-Campbell, Robert Stone, John Halsted, Balfour Hutchison, Colville Wemyss, Rowley Hill, Kenneth Loch, Michael Gambier-Parry, Alastair MacDougall, Arthur Wakely, Edmond Schreiber, Robert Pargiter and Sydney Muspratt, along with Horace Robertson of the Australian Army, and Harry Crerar and Georges Vanier of the Canadian Army. Nearly all of these men were, like Stopford himself, destined to become general officers in the near future. In February 1926 Stopford became a General Staff Officer at the Small Arms School at Hythe, Kent. On 1 July 1929 he was promoted to brevet rank of major.

In February 1930 Stopford relinquished his assignment as brigade major with the 11th Infantry Brigade. In May 1932 he was made a GSO2 to the Inspector General of the King's African Rifles. Promoted to permanent major in January 1933, he was a brevet lieutenant colonel two years later. In January 1938, towards the end of the interwar period, Stopford returned to the Staff College, Camberley, this time with the role of Senior Instructor, and was promoted to colonel on 25 July (with seniority backdating to 12 January). In this position he came into contact with numerous other members of the Directing Staff who were to achieve high rank in the war which was believed to be inevitable. They were John Swayne, Brian Horrocks, Alexander Galloway, Charles Allfrey, Francis Festing, Charles Keightley, Charles Loewen and Cameron Nicholson, along with the Commandant, Major General Sir Ronald Adam.

Second World War

France and Belgium

Stopford was still there by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. However, just over a month later he was selected to command the 17th Infantry Brigade, then being formed in Aldershot, Hampshire for service overseas, and was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier. Comprising three Regular Army battalions formerly scattered around the United Kingdom, the brigade was serving under Aldershot Command until being sent to France, arriving there on 19 October, as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). There the brigade served briefly under General Headquarters (GHQ) BEF before passing to the control of II Corps, whose General Officer Commanding (GOC), Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke, had been one of Stopford's instructors at the Staff College, Camberley in the 1920s and thought highly of his capabilities. In December the brigade was transferred again, to the 4th Division under Major General Dudley Johnson (who had been one of Stopford's fellow students at the Staff College), before, towards the end of the month, coming under the command of Major General Harold Franklyn's 5th Division. In addition to Stopford's 17th Brigade, the division had the 13th Brigade under Brigadier Miles Dempsey and the 15th Brigade under Brigadier Horatio Berney-Ficklin, and supporting divisional troops.

The next few months were spent in relative quiet, the brigade either training or helping in the construction of defensive positions in expectation of a repeat of the trench warfare that had characterised so much of the First World War. By 9 May 1940, the day before the German Army attacked in the West, Stopford's brigade, along with the rest of the 5th Division, was held in GHQ Reserve, the War Office's view being that it should return to the United Kingdom as a reserve. However, by 16 May the division (excluding the 15th Brigade, which had been removed for participation in operations in Norway) was on the River Senne, where it first encountered the Germans, but was soon ordered to disengage and withdraw to the River Escaut. On 19 May the division was ordered to Arras, where a gap was emerging. Major General Franklyn, GOC of the 5th Division, was ordered to take command of Major General Giffard Martel's 50th Division and the 1st Army Tank Brigade, in addition to his own division, which was to be known as "Frankforce". On 21 May "Frankforce" was ordered by General Lord Gort, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the BEF, to attack across the German line of advance. Stopford's 17th Brigade was held in reserve on Vimy Ridge for the operation, and, on 23 May, after Stopford himself noticed German infantry and tanks advancing on 17th Brigades' position. Although French support was promised it never materialised and the brigade, after heavy fighting, was ordered to retreat, withdrawing from their positions on the night of 23 May and the early hours of 24 May.

Britain

A few weeks later Stopford, along with Dempsey, was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his services in France and Belgium. Stopford remained with his brigade for the next seven months, in June moving to Scotland with the rest of the division, now reunited with all three brigades and commanded from mid-July by Major General Horatio Berney-Ficklin, formerly the 15th Brigade commander, after Major General Franklyn was promoted to command VIII Corps, to reform after its severe casualties. Most of the rest of 1940 was spent in Scottish Command and was devoted to training to repel a German invasion of Britain, then, in the aftermath of Dunkirk, thought to be imminent, although in Scotland it was considered less likely, yet still a distinct possibility. By late October, with the threat of invasion now much receded, the division moved to North West England.

By now recognised as a potential senior commander, and in common with a number of other relatively junior officers who had fought in France, in late January 1941 he handed over command of the 17th Brigade, which he had now commanded for almost sixteen months, to Brigadier G. W. B. Tarleton and was made GOC of the 56th (London) Infantry Division, in succession to Major General Claude Liardet, soon receiving a promotion to the acting major general. A first line Territorial Army (TA) formation, formerly the 1st London Division, the 56th Division − comprising the 167th, 168th and 169th Infantry Brigades and supporting divisional troops − was serving in Kent, the most vulnerable part of the country to invasion, as one of three divisions in XII Corps, then commanded by Lieutenant General Andrew Thorne until April when he was replaced by Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. The two other divisions in XII Corps were the 43rd (Wessex) and 44th (Home Counties) Divisions, commanded respectively by Major Generals Charles Allfrey (from late February) and Brian Horrocks (from late June), both of whom were known to Stopford, having been fellow instructors at the Staff College, Camberley before the war. Thanks to his predecessor, Major General Liardet, a TA officer who had been GOC for well over three years, the division, which had not seen action in France, was relatively well trained and reasonably well-equipped and, with the arrival of Montgomery as the new corps commander, large-scale exercises became common, getting progressively more difficult each week. Montgomery, already well known for his tendency to dismiss senior officers who failed to live up to his standards, appears to have formed a high opinion of Stopford, as the latter was not sacked, and may well have secured for him his next appointment, as Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley, handing over command of the 56th Division to Major General Eric Miles in early October.

Burma and India

Stopford was sent to India to become GOC of XXXIII Indian Corps, in succession to Lieutenant General Philip Christison, who was posted to XV Corps as its GOC. Formed the previous year, the corps had so far not seen action against the Japanese, being initially held in reserve. Stopford's arrival coincided with a new role conceived for his corps, which then consisted of only the British 2nd Infantry Division (Major General John Grover). At the Cairo Conference, which was held shortly after Stopford's arrival in India, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China that the Allies would launch an amphibious operation across the Bay of Bengal. Roosevelt's intention was to convince the Chinese to keep as many of their forces in northern Burma as possible. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred an amphibious assault on Sumatra (codenamed Operation Culverin), at the northern tip of the island, but there were too few resources available for such an operation. As a result, Churchill considered Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the new Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command (SEAC), could instead plan to capture the Andaman Islands (Operation Buccaneer). In December the Allied leaders returned to Cairo, both Mountbatten and Stopford meeting them there, the former presenting his views to Roosevelt and Churchill. Despite his best efforts it was decided to cancel the latter operation, due to a lack of manpower and landing craft.

Mountbatten was not beaten and, upon returning to India, ordered Stopford to continue to train XXXIII Corps in amphibious operations, which it did so for the next months. In March 1944, the Japanese 15th Army (Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi), launched an offensive at the centre of the Allied front at Imphal. Lieutenant General William Slim, GOC of the Fourteenth Army and Lieutenant General Geoffry Scoones, GOC IV Corps, had both predicted a move like this by the Japanese and Scoones, whose corps was holding the sector, withdrew to a more defensible sector. Slim had failed to estimate the arrival of the Japanese 31st Division (Lieutenant General Kōtoku Satō), which headed for Kohima, 80 mi (130 km) north of Imphal. If the 31st Division were able to take the small town of Kohima, they would be almost unopposed and be able to march into Assam, cutting land communications to Ledo, at the Indian end of the Ledo Road, then being built to China.

The British first received reports that the Japanese were aiming for Kohima from the local Naga people, and from V Force patrols, in the third week of March. The 1st Battalion, Assam Regiment moved west to Jessami to intercept them. On 28 March fighting began and continued for another two days, gaining valuable time. The battalion, only very recently raised, fighting against a numerically superior force, was forced to withdraw to Kohima. At the same time Colonel Hugh Richards had arrived to take command of the garrison at Kohima, which was substantially outnumbered. Slim made a decision for the 161st Indian Brigade, detached from the 5th Indian Infantry Division, to be flown into Dimapur, and to move into Kohima, arriving there on 29 March, after receiving reports on the Japanese strength. Slim also placed Major General Robert Ranking, GOC 202nd Lines of Communication Area (202 LoC), in temporary command of the area.

Postwar

After the war Stopford served as commander of Burma Command (renamed from Twelfth Army) from 1945 to 1946, as C-in-C Allied Land Forces in the Dutch East Indies in 1946 and as C-in-C SEAC from 1946 to 1947 before becoming General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of Northern Command in England from 1947 to 1949. He retired from the British Army in 1949, with the rank of full general, having been promoted to that rank in October 1946. He was also appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Rifle Brigade.

After the war Stopford was further made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1947 and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1948. He was Colonel Commandant of the Rifle Brigade from 1951 to 1958, and Chairman of the Army Cadet Force Association from 1951 to 1961, later becoming vice president from 1961. In 1962 he held the honorary post of Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and lived at Rock Hill House in Chipping Norton. He married Dorothy Deare, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Foulkes Deare, on 12 April 1921. They had no children. His wife died on 4 October 1982.