[6] Tudor was sent to South Africa during the Second Boer War where he was badly wounded at the Battle of Magersfontein (11 December 1899), but recovered and returned to duty, and was promoted to captain on 7 February 1900.

He was a fighting general who spent a lot of time in the front lines: he was almost killed at the Third Battle of Ypres in October 1917, when a shell fragment hit him in the head and smashed his helmet.

He suggested an attack in the Cambrai sector in July 1917, and his artillery ideas helped lay the foundation for the British breakthrough in the battle there in November.

During the brief period when Churchill had served as an infantry officer on the Western Front in early 1916, he was posted to the same sector as Tudor, near Ploegsteert Wood.

[12] When Tudor took up his new post, the Irish War of Independence was approaching a crisis: indeed, within a couple of months, the British administration in Ireland was on the verge of collapse.

Hundreds of police officers resigned both as a result of intimidation and in protest at the governments repeated mass releases of IRA prisoners which continued up until the spring of 1920.

Tudor's assignment, as he saw it, was to raise police morale, punish crime and restore law and order: "I had nothing to do with politics," he wrote years later, "and don't care a hoop of hell what measure of Home Rule they got."

[13] At a Cabinet conference on 23 July 1920, his Dublin Castle colleagues were calling for an offer of "Dominion Home Rule" (i.e. Canadian-style self-government, within the Empire, as opposed to the devolved Parliament within the UK which was due to have become law in 1914 and was eventually elected in May 1921).

[15] With the army stretched very thin by the deployment of 2 extra divisions to Iraq, and the threatened British coal strike in September 1920, Tudor created the Auxiliary Division, a temporary gendarmerie composed of ex-officers and commanded by a pair of experienced colonial warriors: Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier and Brigadier-General E. A.

Sir Nevil Macready (Commander-in-Chief, Ireland) had been initially impressed by Tudor (June 1920) and thought he was getting rid of "incompetent idiots" from senior police positions.

Macready and the CIGS Sir Henry Wilson became increasingly concerned that Tudor, with the connivance of Lloyd George, who loved to drop hints to that effect, was operating an unofficial policy of killing IRA men in reprisal for the deaths of pro-Crown forces.

However Macready also told Wilson that the Army was arranging "accidents" for suspected IRA men, but not telling the politicians as he did not want them "talked and joked about after dinner by Cabinet Ministers".

"[21] On 17 August 1920 Macready had a Special General Order issued which warned that the severest disciplinary measures would be taken for any signs of looting or retaliation.

The day began with an Irish Republican Army operation, organised by Michael Collins, to assassinate members of the "Cairo Gang" – a team of undercover British intelligence agents working and living in Dublin.

After a Roman Catholic priest was shot dead by an insane Auxiliary in December 1920, a Castle official noted in his diary that he felt some sympathy for the killer, "as these men have undoubtedly been influenced by what they have taken as the passive approval of their officers from Tudor downwards to believe that they will never be punished for anything.

On 29 December, Tudor attended a special Cabinet conference, along with Wilson, Macready and John Anderson (Head of the Civil Service in Dublin), who all advised that no truce should be allowed for elections to the planned Dublin Parliament, and that at least four months of martial law would be required to restore order: the date for the elections was therefore set for May 1921.

In addition, Macready thought the RIC had become unreliable and had lost confidence in Tudor, who was also being criticised by Robertson, under whom he had previously served on the Rhine.

[27] With the Irish elections and the potential Triple Alliance strike in Britain out of the way, an extra 17 army battalions were sent (bringing British strength up to 60,000) in June and July 1921; but the politicians drew back from the brink, and faced with the choice of either waging a war of reconquest or negotiating peace with the insurgents, they opened secret talks with James Craig and Éamon de Valera.

In February 1922, Churchill (who was now Secretary of State for the Colonies) appointed his friend to a new post in the troubled Palestine Mandate – General Officer Commanding and Inspector-General of Police and Prisons, with the temporary rank of air vice marshal.

He arrived in Palestine to assume the role in June but his refusal to properly manage his dual civil and military responsibilities resulted in his effective dismissal.