Richard Nelson Gale General Sir Richard Nelson " Windy " Gale GCB , KBE , DSO , MC ( 1896 – 1982 ) was a soldier in the British Army who served in both world wars . In World War I he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918 whilst serving as a junior officer in the Machine Gun Corps . In World War II he served with 1st Parachute Brigade and then the 6th Airborne Division during the invasion of Normandy and Operation Tonga in 1944 . After the end of the conflict , Gale remained with the Army and eventually became the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe . Early life . Gale was born on 25 July 1896 in London , England . The early years of his life were spent in Australia and New Zealand due to his father gaining employment in insurance , but the Gale family returned to England in 1906 . He was educated at Merchant Taylors ' School , Northwood , a foundation school in the City of London , gaining an average academic record but becoming a prolific reader . After this , he attended further education at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire . For a time , he was a boarder at King Edward VI School Stratford - upon - Avon . When Gale left Aldenham he wanted to become an officer in the Royal Artillery , but did not possess the academic qualifications or physical grades required for entry into the Royal Military Academy , Woolwich . Instead he followed in his father ' s footsteps and gained employment as an insurance agent , but 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 . World War I . When World War I broke out in 1914 , Gale was still below the medical standards required for a recruit and failed to join a Territorial Army unit in London . He finally gained entry to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in the summer of 1915 and before the end of the year had been commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment as a Second Lieutenant . When Gale joined the regiment , he put his name forward for a course on training with machine gun s and was accepted , being transferred to the Machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham ; there he discovered that he had not applied to join a course , but to actually join the Machine Gun Corps . In short order he was posted to the Western Front and it was during his service as a subaltern in France that he won the Military Cross . During the Spring Offensive launched by the German Army in mid - March 1918 , Gale was awarded his Military Cross for ' conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty ' . He covered the retreat of a British infantry unit with his machine gun section , and when an artillery shell landed by a gun limber , he unhitched the killed and wounded horses under heavy fire to allow the limber to be moved away . Inter - war years . When the war ended in 1918 , Gale volunteered to go to India and serve with the British Indian Army , remaining in the Machine - Gun Corps until it was disbanded in 1922 and then reverting to serving with the Worcestershire Regiment . During his time in India he gained entry to the Staff College at Quetta and after two years in the institution he graduated as a staff officer . Promotion prospects in the inter - war years were limited , and although he received above average grades in his annual reports , he remained as a subaltern for fifteen years , until he was promoted to the rank of Captain in the Duke of Cornwall ' s Light Infantry in 1930 . Gale left India in January 1936 and returned to England to serve with the Worcestershire Regiment . After a year he was then transferred to the War Office as a General Staff Officer with responsibilities for the creation of training pamphlets and publications . In December 1938 he was promoted to Major and moved to the Staff Duties ( Planning ) section of the General Staff . World War II . By 1941 Gale had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and given command of a Territorial Army battalion of the Royal Leicestershire Regiment . Then in the summer of 1941 1st Parachute Brigade was formed as part of the expansion of the British airborne forces , and Gale was offered command of the Brigade by General Alan Brooke , who was impressed with the high morale and standards in the battalion ; Gale accepted the command . After a period spent organizing the Brigade , choosing officers and devising new training schemes , Gale was then posted to the War Office in 1942 as Deputy Director of Staff Duties , and subsequently promoted to Director of Air . Gale ' s remit as Director of Air was to attempt to formulate a clear policy about the use of airborne forces between the Army and the Royal Air Force , as well as to solve the aircraft shortages that stymied many attempts to conduct further airborne operations . 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 . Then , in May 1943 Gale was promoted to the rank of major - general and assumed command of the newly formed 6th Airborne Division . Gale had just under a year to organize and train the division before it was due to participate in Operation Tonga , the British airborne landings in Normandy in June 1944 . The division was initially understrength due to trained airborne troops being transferred to North Africa and Sicily to replace the losses suffered by 1st Airborne Division during its operations , but it was soon expanded with the arrival of a Canadian Parachute Battalion , as well as the formation of 5th Parachute Brigade and 6th Airlanding Brigade . 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 . However , Gale ' s thoroughness paid off when the division successfully landed in Normandy in June 1944 , with Gale accompanying the division and landing by glider . For his part in planning and taking part in Operation Tonga , Gale was awarded the DSO on 29 August 1944 . On 5 September the division was taken out of the frontlines and returned to England for rest and recuperation ; Gale did not remain with the division , instead being appointed to the headquarters of First Allied Airborne Army . In the last months of the conflict , he was given command of I Airborne Corps . Later life . Between 1946 - 1947 Gale was given command of the 1st Infantry Division when it served in the Middle East , and in 1948 he was appointed General Officer Commanding British Troops , Egypt and Mediterranean Command . Then in 1949 he was transferred and became Director - General of Military Training . Then , after three years he was promoted to Commander - in - Chief , Northern Army Group , Allied Land Forces Europe and British Army of the Rhine , which he held until 1957 . Gale initially retired in 1957 , but early in 1958 he was recalled to serve with NATO and replaced Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander , Europe ; he retired permanently in 1960 after three years in the post . During the post - war years , Gale also held a number of ceremonial and non - military posts ; he was aide - de - camp ( general ) to the Queen Elizabeth II between 1954 – 7 , Colonel of the Worcestershire Regiment between 1950 – 61 , and Colonel - Commandant of the Parachute Regiment between 1956 – 67 . Gale died in a hospital in Kingston upon Thames on 29 July 1982 . Military thinking . Gale ' s approach to military affairs emerged from both his personal history and personality . Gale , a ' tall , bluff , ruddy ' individual , with a reputation as ' a bit of a buccaneer ' but allegedly possessing a ' hectoring manner and a loud voice ' , was one of a number of Great War veterans to challenge the military status quo that had led to the terrible losses on the Western Front . Events such as the losses on the Somme heavily influenced Gale ' s thinking , and he emerged from the war with a suspicion of predominantly firepower - led operations . 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 , contributing to his embracing the interwar manoeuvrist theorists during his time at Staff College . 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 . During World War II , Gale applied these principles to the development of airborne forces . An advocate of shock manouvre with elite forces , Gale stressed extensive training , the use of the latest battlefield technologies and strong personal leadership . 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 manouvre had on a ' demoralised or unprepared enemy ' , as opposed to a ' well - trained opposition ' , from the operations of the 6th Division in Normandy . Later in life , Gale examined the issues of war in the nuclear age . Still an advocate of manouvre and high quality forces , Gale was to stress the importance of achieving mobility and flexibility in the face of the Soviet threat , foreshadowing in many ways the evolution of the AirLand battle doctrine of the 1980s .