Quick Facts
Biography
General Sir Charles Leslie Richardson GCB CBE DSO (11 August 1908 – 7 February 1994) was a senior British Army officer who saw service in World War II and later reached high office in the 1950s.
Military career
Educated at St. Ronan's School and Clare College, Cambridge, Richardson was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Engineers in 1928. He served in World War II as a General Staff Officer for the Plans Headquarters of the British Eighth Army from 1942.
Richardson played a significant role in the Battle of El Alamein and was responsible for planning the deception operation codenamed Operation Bertram in particular. He was Deputy Chief of Staff for Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army from 1943 and as a brigadier for 21st Army Group from 1944.
After the War he was with the British Control Commission in Berlin from 1945 to 1946 and then with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from 1947 to 1948. He held various staff appointments in the UK and Egypt between 1949 and 1952.
He was appointed Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham in 1955 and then General Officer Commanding for Singapore District in 1958. He went on to be Director of Combat Development at the War Office in 1960 and Director General of Military Training in 1961. In this latter role he was credited with recognising the significance of the Special Air Service which hitherto had been treated as little more than a 'private army of ill-disciplined mavericks'.
In 1963 he became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Northern Command and in 1965 he became Quartermaster-General to the Forces. His final appointment was as Master-General of the Ordnance in 1966: he retired in 1971.
He was Chief Royal Engineer from 1972 to 1977.
His banner as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath hangs in St Michael's Church at Betchworth in Surrey.