Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel KCB KBE DSO MC MIMechE (10 October 1889 – 3 September 1958) was a British Army officer who served in both the First and Second World Wars.

Born into a traditional military family he was the son of Brigadier-General Sir Charles Philip Martel who was Chief Superintendent of Ordnance Factories.

[3] In 1916, as a sapper officer with direct experience of the first British use of tanks on the Somme, Martel was put in charge of recreating a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) wide replica of the British and German trench systems, complete with no man's land, at Elveden, Norfolk, as part of a tank training ground.

[11] Martel was also interested in the construction of wire net roads as deployed in the British Army's 1917–1918 campaign in the Sinai and Palestine and their use in supporting tracked vehicles.

[20] After a demonstration to the War Office, Morris Commercial Cars was contracted to build four test models, the first of which was delivered in 1926.

They were tested along with two-man Carden Loyd tankettes in manoeuvres with the Experimental Mechanized Force on Salisbury Plain in 1927 and 1928.

[29] Martel was appointed General Officer Commanding the 50th Northumbrian Division, Territorial Army in February 1939 with the rank of major-general.

[34][35] In March 1941, he gave the military attaché of the neutral United States in London, Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee, a report outlining his experiences and assessment of the German armoured tactics in France.

[38][39] His reports based on his visit to the Soviet front line and his discussions with the Red Army Tank Directorate concluded that the Soviet battlefield experience would be far more relevant to armoured tactics in the forthcoming Operation Overlord than that of the experience of the British Army in the North African campaign.

Martel's intelligence-gathering and his clear and perceptive analyses of the Soviet military position were commended by his superiors at the War Office but with the arrival of the new and overtly anti-communist Head of RAF Mission, Air Marshal Sir John Babington in September 1943 his working relationship with the Soviets deteriorated with a marked decline in co-operation.