Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Walter Allfrey, (24 October 1895 – 2 November 1964) was a senior British Army officer who served in both the world wars, most notably during the Second World War as General Officer Commanding of V Corps in North Africa and Italy from 1942 to 1944.
Early life and military career Charles Walter Allfrey was born on 24 October 1895 in Southam, Northamptonshire, the youngest son of Captain Henry Allfrey, a British Army officer of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, and Kathleen Hankey. He entered the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. However, upon the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, he instead was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) on 11 August.
Promoted to lieutenant on 9 June 1915, during the war Allfrey was wounded twice. He served on the Western Front with the 94th Brigade of the RFA, part of the 21st Division, a Kitchener's Army unit. He was promoted to the acting rank of captain on 5 January 1917, which was made substantive later that year on 3 November. Allfrey was awarded the Military Cross (MC) in 1918 for keeping his battery in action for an extended period of time, despite being under direct machine gun and artillery fire from the enemy. The citation reads:
He was promoted to acting major on 17 December 1917 and reverted to his permanent rank of captain on 18 February 1919, by which time the war had ended due to the Armistice with Germany.
Between the wars After the war, Allfrey served on regimental duties before becoming adjutant at the Army School of Equitation, from 1925 to 1928, and was seconded to the Colonial Office, being later seconded to the Iraqi Army in November 1930.
In Iraq, he was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and, from October 1932 to November 1933, was employed with the British Military Mission to Iraq where he was Inspector Artillery to the Iraqi Army. He was brevetted to major on 1 January 1931 and promoted to the substantive rank on 10 August 1933. He was brevetted lieutenant colonel on 1 January 1935 and, in the same year, he married Geraldine Clare Lucas-Scudamore. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The following year Allfrey was appointed as a General Staff Officer Grade 1 (GSO1) at the Staff College, Camberley from 1936 to 1939, despite never having attended the college as a student, as many others who later reached high command had, and was promoted to the substantive rank of colonel on 6 August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Second World War France and Britain At the start of the Second World War, in September, Allfrey held a senior staff position, as a GSO1, in the United Kingdom, continuing in this role in France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).Mead, p. 47 In February 1940, however, he returned to the United Kingdom to take up the post of Corps Commander Royal Artillery (CCRA) at II Corps, then commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke. On 19 July 1940, after having participated in the Battle of France and the Dunkirk evacuation, and after a brief spell as CCRA at IV Corps, under Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck, he was promoted to the acting rank of major general to soon took over from Major-General William Green in command of South-Western Area, part of Southern Command, which was responsible for the defence of the counties of Devon and Cornwall in the event of a German invasion, and was then, in the aftermath of Dunkirk, considered highly likely.
In late February 1941 Allfrey was ordered to form the Devon and Cornwall County Division, comprising the recently created 203rd, 209th and 211th Infantry Brigades (all formerly independent brigades), but with no supporting troops, with himself as its General Officer Commanding (GOC). However, within a week, he relinquished command of the division to Major General Frederick Morgan and ordered to take command of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, in succession to Major General Robert Pollok who was retiring. The division was a first-line Territorial Army (TA) formation stationed on the other side of the country in Kent on anti-invasion duties. He was promoted to temporary major general on 19 July 1941. The division was serving as part of XII Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Andrew Thorne (replaced in April by Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery who in turn was replaced by Lieutenant General James Gammell in November), under South-Eastern Command and, like Allfrey's former command, was on anti-invasion duties and training to repel an invasion. Also serving in XII Corps were the 44th (Home Counties) and 56th (London) Divisions, commanded respectively by Major Generals Brian Horrocks and Montagu Stopford, both of whom had been among Allfrey's fellow instructors at the Staff College, Camberley before the war. However, with the arrival of Montgomery as the new corps commander, Allfrey's 43rd Division − comprising the 128th, 129th and 130th Infantry Brigades and divisional troops − was, throughout the year, put through highly intensive and strenuous training for offensive operations, as a result of which the division had been selected for overseas service, although this would not occur during Allfrey's reign as GOC.
In early March 1942, Allfrey handed over command of the 43rd Division to Major General Ivor Thomas, a fellow artilleryman, and was promoted to acting lieutenant general to become the GOC of V Corps in succession to Lieutenant General Edmond Schreiber. Aged just 46, this was a considerable tribute towards Allfrey and made him one of the youngest corps commanders in the British Army at the time. V Corps, with the 38th (Welsh) and 47th (London) Infantry Divisions, commanded respectively by Major Generals Donald Butterworth and Gerald Templer (who had briefly been Allfrey's BGS), and the 214th Independent Infantry Brigade (Home) under command, was serving under Southern Command in a static beach defence role. However, it relinquished this role upon being sent to Scotland in July, where it took under command the 6th Armoured Division, under Major General Charles Keightley (who had been a fellow instructor at the Staff College some years before), and the 4th and 78th Infantry Divisions, commanded by Major Generals John Hawkesworth (another of Allfrey's fellow Staff College instructors) and Vyvyan Evelegh, respectively. Allfrey's V Corps was to form a major component of the First Army, under Lieutenant General Edmond Schreiber (replaced in August by Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson), then being formed for participation in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, scheduled for November. Training in Scotland continued until October, and the 4th and 78th Divisions were posted elsewhere in preparation for the invasion.
North Africa Allfrey led his corps overseas to French North Africa in late November, a few weeks after the invasion, activating it on 5 December, where it took command of all British ground units in Tunisia − the 1st Parachute Brigade under Brigadier Edwin Flavell, and the 6th Armoured and 78th Infantry Divisions, along with commandos and elements of the US 1st Armored Division under Major General Orlando Ward. By the time of Allfrey's arrival the run for Tunis had quite clearly failed, due to the Axis forces having brought in significant reinforcements, and the campaign was beginning to turn into a stalemate. The 78th Division was, by the time V Corps took it under command, pulling out through the Tebourba Gap against heavy German resistance. On 9 December an attack planned was cancelled and Allfrey tried to arrange for the French holding the town of Medjez el Bab to be relieved, he also believed, and subsequently ordered, Longstop Hill, overlooking the road to Tunis, to be abandoned. Two weeks later, however, a combined US-British attempt to recapture the hill failed, which, combined with the severe winter weather, was enough to persuade Lieutenant General Anderson, the First Army commander, and Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in North Africa, to abandon any further attempts.
In January 1943, Major-General Keightley's 6th Armoured Division, still part of V Corps, participated in an action at Bou Arada, and resisted a major German attack. The following month the division, after failing to take Djebel Mansour, was significantly involved in the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Towards the end of February and into early March (where, on 9 March, he was promoted to the war substantive rank of major general and to the temporary rank of lieutenant general), V Corps, now reinforced with Major General Harold Freeman-Attwood's 46th Infantry Division, was involved in Operation Ochsenkopf, with the 46th, stationed on V Corps' northern sector, absorbing the brunt of the German offensive, and falling back before bringing the German offensive to a halt, and eventually recovering Djebel Abiod and Sedjanane. Towards the end of March, Major-General Evelegh's 78th Division, along with the newly arrived 4th Division was ordered by Allfrey to clear the route from Medjez el Bab to Tebourba. Supported by the 25th Army Tank Brigade, and later reinforced by Major-General Walter Clutterbuck's 1st Infantry Division, V Corps was, for almost a month, engaged in some of the hardest fighting of the Tunisian campaign to date. The fighting culminated in the 78th Division, on 26 April, managing to capture Longstop Hill, and then, with the 46th Division replacing the 4th Division on 30 April, all three divisions participated in further fierce fighting on the Medjez Plain, where the 1st Division put up an outstanding performance, gaining three Victoria Crosses (VC) in the space of a week.
During the final stages of the campaign, Allfrey's V Corps played a more minor role.Mead, p. 48 The main role was played by IX Corps, under Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks (succeeding Lieutenant General John Crocker, who had been injured). Horrocks, as previously mentioned, had been another one of Allfrey's fellow instructors at the Staff College before the war and thought highly of him, later writing in his autobiography that he "was one of the most popular officers in the British Army", and that "nobody could have been more helpful. The capture of Tunis was the result of the closest cooperation between our two corps, 5 and 9". Despite Allfrey's corps playing a relatively small role in the final stages of the campaign, which ended in mid-May with the surrender of almost 250,000 Axis troops, Allfrey, along with Major General Francis Tuker, GOC of the 4th Indian Division, was able to accept the surrender of German Colonel General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commanding the Panzer Army Africa.
With the fighting in North Africa over Allfrey's V Corps, being in almost continuous fighting for the past five months (with the exception of the last few weeks), was rested and took no part in the Allied invasion of Sicily. The corps was transferred from the First Army, now disbanded, to the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery. In August, he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath and awarded the American Commander of the Legion of Merit for his services in Tunisia. His rank of major general was made substantive on 6 November.
Italy and Egypt