Born on 10 December 1893 in Srinagar Kashmir, Eustace Tickell was educated at Bedford School and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

[2] He received his first commission in the Royal Engineers in 1913 and served in France, Greece and Palestine during the First World War,[1] winning the Military Cross in 1915.

[1] He was then made Commander Royal Engineers (CRE) with Northern Command from 1936−1938, CRE of the 5th Infantry Division until 1939, and then Chief Engineer, British Troops in Egypt, a position he was holding at the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939.

[6] After being made President of the Institution of Royal Engineers in 1948, a post he retained until 1951, he retired from the British Army in 1949 but the next year he was made Colonel Commandant of the Royal Engineer Corps until 1958, as well as, in 1953, becoming Honorary Colonel of the Army Emergency Reserve Royal Engineers Resource Unit, until 1959.

[1] His father, Charles Tickell, was a Civil Engineer who worked for the Maharajah of Kashmir.