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Major General Henry Rodolph Davies, CB (21 September 1865 – 4 January 1950) was a British Army officer who commanded the 11th (Northern) Division during the First World War.

Military career

Davies was born in Windsor, Berkshire on 21 September 1865, the younger son of Henry Fanshawe Davies, a British Army officer who would rise to the rank of lieutenant general. His grandfather was General Francis John Davies and his great-grandfather was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Byam Martin. The family seat was Elmley Castle, Pershore, Worcestershire. His elder brother was Francis Davies, who later became a full general in the British Army. Henry junior was educated at Eton College, where he was proficient in Oriental languages.

Davies joined the British Army, initially being commissioned as a lieutenant into the 4th (Militia) Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment in January 1883. He resigned his commission over a year later, in February 1884, and, after graduating from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, was re-commissioned into the Oxfordshire Light Infantry (which later became the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry) as a lieutenant in August that year.

He was sent to British-controlled Burma in 1887 and to Siam in 1892, the year in which he became a captain. In 1893 he was attached to a survey unit which surveyed the passes between Burma and China and located the Crouching Tiger Pass, the Heavenly Horse Pass and the Han Dragon Pass. On completion of the team's objectives Davies remained in China to explore the Yunnan area. On his return to England he was asked to survey a potential railway route from India to the Yangtze river via Yunnan and in 1898 returned to Burma. By mid-1899 his team had travelled nearly 2,500 miles of the proposed route, mapping the terrain in detail. He wrote a book about his experiences and in 1906 was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Murchison Award.

Davies was involved in the Tirah campaign (1897–98), where he was mentioned in despatches, the Boxer Rebellion (1900), and the Second Boer War (1901–1902). In September 1911 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and ordered back to Britain to take command of the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

On the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914, the battalion was based at Aldershot and was mobilised as part of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Division, in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Davies remained in command of the battalion through the first campaigns on the Western Front, until promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general in February 1915 (his permanent rank of lieutenant colonel was advanced to colonel in September of that year) to take command of the 3rd Infantry Brigade from Richard Butler.

He remained with the brigade throughout 1915 and 1916 until he was transferred to command the 33rd Infantry Brigade in the 11th (Northern) Division in 1917. In May of that year, after Major General Archibald Ritchie, the division's general officer commanding (GOC), was wounded, Davies took command of the division. He served as the division's GOC throughout 1917 and into 1918. It was in September of that year, during the Hundred Days Offensive, where Davies was wounded in action, as the divisional diary records:

Arras. Major-General H. R. Davies, C.B., Cmd. the Division, was wounded while going round one of the forward companies, and was evacuated to C.C.S.

After returning to his command the following month, he continued to lead the 11th until the armistice of 11 November 1918 and relinquished command when it was demobilised in 1919, by which time Davies' rank of major general was made permanent in January of that year. During the war, Davies was mentioned in despatches eight times and rose rapidly in rank, from a lieutenant colonel to major general.

After the end of the war, Davies commanded the reformed 49th (West Riding) Division in the Territorial Army (TA) before he retired from the army in 1923. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

He died on 4 January 1950, at the age of 84 years.

Notes

1. "Henry Rodolph Davies". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 17 November 2023.
2. "No. 13491". The Edinburgh Gazette. 25 August 1919. p. 2877.
3. Walford, Edward (1876). The County Families of the United Kingdom Or Royal Manual of the Titled and Untitled Aristocracy of Great Britain and Ireland. p. 265. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
4. ^ Davies & Maddocks 2014, p. 131.
5. ^ Mullaney, p. 45
6. "No. 25184". The London Gazette. 2 January 1883. p. 31.
7. "No. 25318". The London Gazette. 15 February 1884. p. 791.
8. "No. 25389". The London Gazette. 22 August 1884. p. 3831.
9. "No. 26319". The London Gazette. 23 August 1892. p. 4821.
10. "No. 28532". The London Gazette. 19 September 1911. p. 6881.
11. ^ "DAVIES, Maj.-Gen. Henry Rodolph", in Who Was Who (2007). Online edition
12. Edmonds, p. 417
13. "No. 29107". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 March 1915. p. 2820.
14. "No. 29302". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 September 1915. p. 9301.
15. "No. 31092". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1918. p. 13.
16. "No. 29608". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 June 1916. p. 5555.

References

• Davies, Frank; Maddocks, Graham (2014) . Bloody Red Tabs: General Officer Casualties of the Great War 1914–1918. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 978-1-78346-237-7.
• Edmonds, Brigadier General . E. (1922). Military Operations France and Belgium 1914: Mons, the Retreat to the Seine, the Marne and the Aisne August–October 1914. History of the Great War. Macmillan.
• Mullaney, Thomas (2010). Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520272743.

• 1865 births
• 1950 deaths
• British Militia officers
• Worcestershire Regiment officers
• Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
• Military personnel from Windsor, Berkshire
• People educated at Eton College
• Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry officers
• Companions of the Order of the Bath
• British Army generals of World War I
• British Army personnel of the Second Boer War
• British Army major generals
• Recipients of the MacGregor Medal
• British military personnel of the Third Anglo-Burmese War
• British military personnel of the Tirah campaign
• British Army personnel of the Boxer Rebellion