Major-General Sir Francis Wilfred "Freddie" de Guingand, was a British Army officer who served as Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's chief of staff from the Second Battle of El Alamein until the end of the Second World War. He played an important diplomatic role in sustaining relations between the notoriously difficult Montgomery and his peers and superiors.
Freddie de Guingand
De Guingand outside Montgomery's caravan in Tripoli
The British commanders of Operation Husky planning their operations in Malta, left to right: de Guingand; Air Commodore Claude Pelly; Air Vice Marshal Harry Broadhurst; General Sir Bernard Montgomery; and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.
General Sir Bernard Montgomery with his senior officers at Eighth Army Headquarters at Vasto, shortly before handing over command of the Eighth Army to prepare for the Normandy invasion in England. Left to right: de Guingand, Air Vice Marshal Harry Broadhurst, Montgomery, Lieutenant-Generals Bernard Freyberg, Charles Walter Allfrey and Miles Dempsey
The King's African Rifles (KAR) was a British Colonial Auxiliary Forces regiment raised from Britain's East African colonies in 1902. It primarily carried out internal security duties within these colonies along with military service elsewhere during the world wars and other conflicts, such as the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau uprising. The regiment's enlisted soldiers were drawn from the native Africans, while most officers were seconded from the British Army. During the 1960s, as part of the decolonisation of Africa, more African officers were commissioned into the regiment before it was gradually disbanded. KAR battalions would go on to form the core of newly established armed forces throughout East Africa.
KAR troops training in Kenya, c. 1944
Contingent of KAR at the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902, photographed by John Benjamin Stone; the written notes indicate some are Sudanese
The original 3rd Bn KAR formed in 1902 in Kenya
King's African Rifles War Memorial, Zomba, Malawi