General Sir Richard Nelson "Windy" Gale, GCB, KBE, DSO, MC (25 June 1896 – 29 July 1982) was a senior officer in the British Army who served in both world wars.

After the end of the conflict, Gale remained in the army and eventually, in 1958, succeeded Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

[4] The early years of his life were spent in Australia and New Zealand due to his father's gaining employment in insurance, but the Gale family returned to England in 1906.

[6] Instead Gale followed in his father's footsteps and gained employment as an insurance agent, but he rapidly grew to dislike the job; determined to enter the British Army, he attended regular physical training classes and studied hard to improve his academic grades.

[6][8] When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Gale, only recently turned 18, was still below the medical standards required for a recruit and failed to join a Territorial Force unit in London.

The citation for the MC reads: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in covering the retirement of the infantry with his section of machine guns, holding up the attack and causing the enemy heavy casualties.

Later, when a shell landed in the centre of the gun limbers, he went out under heavy fire and unhitched the killed and wounded horses, so enabling the transport to move away to cover.

[21]Soon promoted to captain, Gale continued to serve on the Western Front, taking part in the Hundred Days Offensive, until the end of the war on 11 November 1918.

[33] February 1942 saw Operation Biting, perhaps better known as the Bruneval Raid, take place, in which Major John Frost's 'C' Company of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, of Gales' 1st Para Brigade, was selected to participate.

[33] The raid, "a model of a combined operation on a minor scale", in Gale's own words[36] was very successful, with the objective – to seize equipment from a German radar station in France – being achieved, although there were casualties.

This tendency to hang decisions on the next superior should have no place in the mental attitude of an airborne officer, for in nine cases out of ten he might never make the contact; but, even if he did, it was action that was wanted and this was where initiative came in.

There was a great deal of rivalry between the two services, with the RAF sure that large-scale bombing would win the conflict, and therefore unwilling to transfer any aircraft to the army for use by airborne forces.

[41][42][33][23] Gale had just under a year to organize and train the division before it was due to participate in Operation Tonga, codename for the British airborne landings in Normandy, in June 1944.

[43][33] No British airborne division had ever been deployed into battle entirely through aerial means, and devising plans and formulating tactics for the operation placed a great deal of pressure on Gale.

[47][44] By midday on D-Day elements of Brigadier Lord Lovat's 1st Special Service Brigade had landed at Sword Beach, with the British 3rd Infantry Division following, and began to relieve the airborne troops at the bridges.

[44][6] The next week saw the 6th Airborne Division, serving as part of Lieutenant-General John Crocker's I Corps, engaged in almost constant fighting, notably at Bréville, in an attempt to prevent the Germans from driving the Allies back into the sea.

[44] After mid-June, when German counterattacks ceased, the division, reinforced by the 1st and 4th Special Service Brigades, spent the next two months in a static defence role, holding a nine thousand yard front southwards from the sea.

[6] Gale relinquished command of the division to Major-General Horatius Murray in December 1947 and, in January 1948, he was appointed GOC British Troops in Egypt, succeeding Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Allfrey.

[44][56][57][58][1] His wife Ethel having died in 1952, on 7 April, 1953, Gale married secondly Daphne Mabelle Eveline, daughter of Francis Blick, of Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Gale, a 'tall, bluff, ruddy'[67] individual, with a reputation as 'a bit of a buccaneer'[68] but allegedly possessing a 'hectoring manner and a loud voice',[69] was one of a number of First World War veterans to challenge the military status quo that had led to the terrible losses on the Western Front.

[71] Looking back, Gale was to remember the 'wonderful panorama' of the infantry successfully advancing using modern infiltration tactics on a clear day in the spring of 1918,[72] contributing to his embracing the interwar manoeuvrist theorists during his time at the Staff College, Quetta in the early 1930s.

Gale saw a narrative in the sequence of developments from the creation of the new infantry tactics of 1918, through to the tanks and airborne forces of the 1940s, that demonstrated the 'fundamental necessity of mobility on the battlefield', and the importance of surprise at all levels of warfare.

An advocate of shock manoeuvre with elite forces, Gale stressed extensive training, the use of the latest battlefield technologies and strong personal leadership.

[74][page needed] For Gale, the quality of one's military forces were as important as their number, and he drew additional lessons on the disproportionate effect that surprise manoeuvre had on a "demoralised or unprepared enemy", as opposed to a 'well-trained opposition', from the operations of his own 6th Airborne Division in Normandy.

Still an advocate of manoeuvre and high-quality forces, Gale was to stress the importance of achieving mobility and flexibility in the face of the Soviet threat,[76][page needed] foreshadowing in many ways the evolution of the AirLand battle doctrine of the 1980s.