[1] Ingram Cleasby was born on 27 March 1920 in Kendal, Westmorland, England, and was educated at Sedbergh and Magdalen College, Oxford.
After training throughout 1942 most of the division, now under Major General George Hopkinson, departed for North Africa in April 1943, and Cleasby's 1st Airlanding Brigade, under Brigadier Philip Hicks, took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily (see Operation Ladbroke).
In September it landed in Italy and fought briefly in the early stages of the Italian Campaign until again being withdrawn, this time to the United Kingdom, arriving there in mid-December.
Not involved in the Normandy landings, the division, now under Major General Roy Urquhart, participated in September 1944 in Operation Market Garden.
[7] Described in his Daily Telegraph obituary as a "broad, inclusive, traditional Anglican", he died in Dent, Cumbria, at the age of 88 on 9 February 2009.