Desmond Fitzpatrick

General Sir Geoffrey Richard Desmond Fitzpatrick, (14 December 1912 – 12 October 2002) was a senior British Army officer who served as commander of the British Army of the Rhine and Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. After his retirement from the army he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jersey and later held a ceremonial position in the Royal Household. Early life Fitzpatrick was born on 14 December 1912 in Aldershot, the son of Sir Ernest Richard Fitzpatrick, a brigadier general. He attended Eton College and then the Royal Military College Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 1st The Royal Dragoons on 1 September 1932. He was promoted lieutenant three years later. In 1938, his regiment was sent to Palestine to suppress the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, and on 22 December 1939 Fitzpatrick received the Military Cross for his role in operations there. Second World War Fitzpatrick was promoted to captain on 1 September 1940. In 1941, his regiment was dispatched to Syria, with him as adjutant, to join Operation Exporter, the allied invasion of territory controlled by Vichy France in the Middle East. Fitzpatrick's regiment then participated in the Western Desert Campaign, in the reconnaissance role. After the operations there, he attended the British staff college at Haifa, and in June 1942 he became brigade major of the 2nd Armoured Brigade, where he helped to plan the Second Battle of El Alamein. After the battle, by which time he was a temporary major, Fitzpatrick was Mentioned in Despatches on 24 June 1943, and later appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), announced in the London Gazette in October 1943. By now he was an acting lieutenant colonel. The recommendation for the MBE credits his planning for he successful deployment of 2nd Armoured Brigade during the battle, and also comments on his "personal example, often under heavy shell fire" while at the Tactical HQ during the battle itself, from where he passed back valuable information to the higher-level formations which had a material effect on the outcome of the battle. Fitzpatrick next served as a staff officer with the US First Corps and in a position at the War Office, before rejoining his regiment in the Netherlands in 1944 and taking command of one of its squadrons. In 1945, he took command of the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars, which served as the reconnaissance regiment of the 7th Armoured Division.