Leslie Hollis

General Sir Leslie Chasemore Hollis, KCB, KBE (9 February 1897 – 9 August 1963) was a Royal Marines officer who served as Commandant General Royal Marines from 1949 to 1952.

[2] Hollis was commissioned into the Royal Marine Light Infantry in 1914 and served in the First World War in the Grand Fleet and the Harwich Force.

[3] Between the wars he attended the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, from 1927 to 1928,[2] and later served on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief Africa Station and of the Plans Division at the Admiralty before being appointed assistant secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1936.

[3] He was present at virtually every major decision during that period, attending all the major conferences—Washington, Cairo, Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam—and was instrumental in establishing what became known as the Cabinet War Rooms (now known the Churchill War Rooms).

[4] After the war Hollis became deputy secretary (military) to the Cabinet in 1947 and Commandant General Royal Marines in 1949.

A convalescent Winston Churchill meets the outgoing and incoming Supreme Commanders in the Mediterranean, Dwight D. Eisenhower , to Churchill's right, and Henry Maitland Wilson , to his left. Behind them stand (from left to right), John Whiteley , Air Marshal Arthur Tedder , Brigadier G. S. Thompson , Admiral Sir John Cunningham , unknown, Sir Harold Alexander , Captain M. L. Power , Humfrey Gale , Leslie Hollis, and Eisenhower's chief of staff , Walter Bedell Smith .