Major General Pierse Joseph Mackesy, CB, DSO, MC (5 April 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a British Army officer who, early in the Second World War, led the attempt to recapture Narvik in April–May 1940 in the ill-fated Norwegian campaign.
[5] Destined to be sent to France to form part of Lieutenant General Ronald Forbes Adam's III Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, the 49th Division was instead held at home in readiness for operations in Scandinavia.
[5][7] Enraging Prime Minister Winston Churchill by refusing to commit his troops to "the sheer bloody murder" of an "arctic Gallipoli", Mackesy was recalled home and amidst Churchillian mutterings about his "feebleness and downright cowardice", was spared a court-martial but he never held command again.
[8][5] Retired from the army in November 1940, Mackesy served for a while on various War Office committees and was an occasional contributor to the Daily Telegraph.
A Southwold borough councillor from 1946, he was later mayor of the town on two separate occasions, as well as being a member of the East Suffolk County Council.