Montagu Brocas Burrows

Lieutenant General Montagu Brocas Burrows CB DSO MC (31 October 1894 – 17 January 1967) was a senior British Army officer who became Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of West Africa Command from 1945 to 1946.

Military career

Educated at Eton College and Oxford University,^[1] Burrows was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 5th Dragoon Guards, British Army.^[2] He served in the First World War and became a prisoner of war.^[1] He was deployed to the Murmansk coast with the North Russia Expeditionary Force in 1918.^[2] In the 1920s he played cricket for Surrey County Cricket Club.^[1]

He remained in the army and continued to serve during the interwar period; he became adjutant at Oxford University Officers' Training Corps in 1920 and an Instructor at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1922.^[2] He became brigade major with the Nowshera Infantry Brigade in India in 1928 and then joined the 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot in 1930.^[2] He was on the General Staff at the War Office from 1935 to 1938 when he became the military attaché in Rome.^[2]

He also served in the Second World War as General Officer Commanding (GOC) 9th Armoured Division in the United Kingdom from December 1940 to March 1942^[3] and of the 11th Armoured Division from October 1942 to December 1943; he was appointed Head of the British Military Mission to the Soviet Union in 1944.^[2]

After the war he became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of West Africa Command; he retired in 1946.^[2]

References