General Sir Alfred Reade Godwin-Austen, KCSI, CB, OBE, MC (17 April 1889 – 20 March 1963) was a British Army officer who served during the First and the Second World Wars.
[9] Godwin-Austen was a great-grandson of Major General Sir Henry Godwin, who commanded the British and Indian forces in the Second Anglo-Burmese War.
During his service in the First World War, he was awarded the Military Cross[10] and twice mentioned in despatches while serving as a staff officer with the 13th (Western) Division, a Kitchener's Army formation, on Gallipoli, in Palestine and in Mesopotamia.
[11] Godwin-Austen attended the Staff College, Camberley, as a student from 1924 to 1925, alongside fellow students such as Ivor Thomas, Noel Beresford-Peirse, Vyvyan Pope, Douglas Graham, Michael O'Moore Creagh, Daril Watson, Archibald Nye, Humfrey Gale and Noel Irwin, all of whom rose to high command in the next war.
Due to a lack of promotion in his own regiment, Godwin-Austen transferred to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and commanded the 2nd Battalion from 1936 to 1937, before being employed with the British Military Mission to the Egyptian Army from 1937 to 1938.
His next appointment, during the Arab revolt in Palestine, was in successive command of the 13th and 14th Infantry Brigades, the latter post being held until August 1939, shortly before the Second World War began.
Once Mogadishu had been taken, Cunningham swung his force inland across the Ogaden desert and into Ethiopia, entering the capital, Addis Ababa, on 6 April.
During Operation Crusader, he was vociferous in his opposition to the suggestion of Alan Cunningham, by now commanding Eighth Army, and so once more his direct superior, that they should abandon the offensive after the setback of Rommel's "dash to the wire".
[a] Churchill relented in November after the intervention of South African Field Marshal Jan Smuts and Godwin-Austen was appointed Director of Tactical Investigation at the War Office.