W. N. T. Beckett
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W. N. T. Beckett
Captain Walter Napier Thomason Beckett, MVO, DSC (1893 – 1941) was a noted Royal Navy officer in both the First World War and the Second World War. He was known to most people as "Joe" Beckett, after a famous British boxer of the same era, as they shared the same surname. Beckett was also a capable amateur boxer, holding the title of Royal Navy Heavyweight boxing champion for some time. In ''Fabulous Admirals and some naval fragments'' published in 1957, Beckett is described as "an Elizabethan character, who was rough, tough, large and strong, and his words smelt of tar, spunyarn, sound commonsense and humour." The author, Commander Geoffrey Lowis RN, included a chapter on Beckett whom he thought a great character. Much of this article is drawn from that book. Early life Beckett was born in Bilaspur in the Central Provinces of India on 25 March 1893. He was the younger son of Brigadier-General William Thomas Clifford Beckett CBE, DSO, VD (1862–1956) and Bessie Drum ...
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Captain (Royal Navy)
Captain (Capt) is a senior officer rank of the Royal Navy. It ranks above Commander (Royal Navy), commander and below Commodore (Royal Navy), commodore and has a NATO ranking code of OF-5. The rank is equivalent to a colonel in the British Army and Royal Marines, and to a group captain in the Royal Air Force. There are similarly named Captain (naval), equivalent ranks in the navies of many other countries. Seagoing captains In the Royal Navy, the officer in command of any warship of the rank of Commander (Royal Navy), commander and below is informally referred to as "the captain" on board, even though holding a junior rank, but formally is titled "the commanding officer" (or CO). In former times, up until the nineteenth century, Royal Navy officers who were captains by rank and in command of a naval vessel were referred to as post-captains; this practice is now defunct. A Captain (D) or Captain Destroyers afloat was an operational commander responsible for the command of dest ...
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Mentioned In Dispatches
To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face of the enemy is described. In some countries, a service member's name must be mentioned in dispatches as a condition for receiving certain decorations. United Kingdom, British Empire, and Commonwealth of Nations Servicemen and women of the British Empire or the Commonwealth who are mentioned in despatches (MiD) are not awarded a medal for their actions, but receive a certificate and wear an oak leaf device on the ribbon of the appropriate campaign medal. A smaller version of the oak leaf device is attached to the ribbon when worn alone. Prior to 2014, only one device could be worn on a ribbon, irrespective of the number of times the recipient was mentioned in despatches. Where no campaign medal is awarded, the oak leaf is worn direc ...
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Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC is granted in recognition of "an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land" to all members of the British Armed Forces of any rank. In 1979, the Queen approved a proposal that a number of awards, including the Military Cross, could be recommended posthumously. History The award was created on 28 December 1914 for commissioned officers of the substantive rank of captain or below and for warrant officers. The first 98 awards were gazetted on 1 January 1915, to 71 officers, and 27 warrant officers. Although posthumous recommendations for the Military Cross were unavailable until 1979, the first awards included seven posthumous awards, with the word 'deceased' after the name of the recipient, from rec ...
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Companion In The Most Honourable Order Of The Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved Bathing#Medieval and early-modern Europe, bathing (as a symbol of purification) as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as "Knights of the Bath". George I "erected the Knights of the Bath into a regular Order (honour), Military Order". He did not (as is commonly believed) revive the Order of the Bath, since it had never previously existed as an Order, in the sense of a body of knights who were governed by a set of Statute, statutes and whose numbers were replenished when vacancies occurred. The Order consists of the Sovereign (currently Charles III, King Charles III), the :Great Masters of the Order of the Bath, Great Master (currently vacant) and three Classes of members: *Knight Grand Cross (:Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath ...
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Clifford Thomason Beckett
Major-General Clifford Thomason Beckett CB, CBE, MC (9 November 1891 – 8 July 1972) was an officer of the British Army who had a distinguished military career which spanned almost thirty-five years, including service in the two world wars. Early life Clifford Beckett was the older son of Brigadier-General William Thomas Clifford Beckett and Bessie Drummond Thomason, daughter of Major-General Charles Simeon Thomason of the Bengal Royal Engineers. His younger brother was Walter Napier Thomason Beckett, who later joined the Royal Navy (RN). Before his military career, Beckett's father William had been a civil engineer of the British Raj. Clifford Beckett spent a significant part of his childhood living in India, where his father was in charge of constructing the first railway bridges over the Orissa rivers on the East Coast Extension of the Bengal – Nagpur Railway, completing the connection between the cities of Calcutta and Madras. In 1901, he was awarded the Gold Medal ...
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Bengal Engineer Group
The Bengal Engineer Group (BEG) (informally the Bengal Sappers or Bengal Engineers) is a military engineering regiment in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The unit was originally part of the Bengal Army of the East India Company's Bengal Presidency, and subsequently part of the British Indian Army during the British Raj. The Bengal Sappers are stationed at Roorkee Cantonment in Roorkee, Uttarakhand. The Bengal Sappers are one of the few remaining regiments of the erstwhile Bengal Presidency Army and survived the Rebellion of 1857 due to their "sterling work" in the recapture by the East India Company of Delhi and other operations in 1857–58. The troops of the Bengal Sappers have been a familiar sight for over 200 years in the battlefields of British India with their never-say-die attitude of ''Chak De'' and brandishing their favourite tool the ''hamber''.
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Volunteer Decoration
The Volunteer Officers' Decoration, post-nominal letters VD, was instituted in 1892 as an award for long and meritorious service by officers of the United Kingdom's Volunteer Force. Award of the decoration was discontinued in the United Kingdom when it was superseded by the Territorial Decoration in 1908, but it continued to be awarded in some Crown Dependencies until 1930.North East Medals - The Volunteer Officers' Decoration
(Accessed 28 June 2015)
The grant of the decoration was extended in 1894 by the institution of a separate new decoration, the

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Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order (DSO) is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, as well as formerly of other parts of the Commonwealth, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat. Since 1993 it has been awarded specifically for 'highly successful command and leadership during active operations', with all ranks being eligible. History Instituted on 6 September 1886 by Queen Victoria in a royal warrant published in ''The London Gazette'' on 9 November, the first DSOs awarded were dated 25 November 1886. The order was established to reward individual instances of meritorious or distinguished service in war. It was a military order, until recently for officers only and typically awarded to officers ranked major (or equivalent) or higher, with awards to ranks below this usually for a high degree of gallantry, just short of deserving the Victoria Cross. Whilst normally given for service un ...
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William Thomas Clifford Beckett
Brigadier-General William Thomas Clifford Beckett CBE DSO VD (1862 – 4 March 1956) was a British railway engineer in India and a British Army officer. Beckett was the eldest son of William Henry Beckett, a colonel in the Indian Army and his wife Sarah Philadelphia Beckett (née Walton). He was educated at Tonbridge School (1877–1880, as a day-boy) and Crystal Palace School of Engineering. His uncle, Frederick Thomas Granville Walton, was an acclaimed bridge engineer in India, who was in charge of the construction of the Dufferin Bridge over the Ganges at Benares between 1881 and 1887, and who served from 1900 as the engineer-in-chief for the construction of the iconic Havelock Bridge, a 2700-metre crossing of the Godavari River in Andhra Pradesh. In 1887, Beckett was appointed a district engineer with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway in India. He became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1889 and a member in 1895. He was promoted to superintendi ...
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India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka.", "Modern human beings—''Homo sapiens''—originated in Africa. Then, int ...
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Central Provinces
The Central Provinces was a province of British India. It comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered parts of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Its capital was Nagpur. Its Summer Capital was Pachmarhi. It became the Central Provinces and Berar in 1903. The Central Provinces was formed in 1861 by the merger of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories and Nagpur Province. The district of Nimar which was administered by the Central India Agency was added in 1864. It was almost an island encircled by a sea of "native States" such as Bhopal State and Rewa State to the north, the Chota Nagpur States and Kalahandi State to the east, and the Nizam's territories of Hyderabad to the south and Berar to the west. Geography The Central Provinces was landlocked, occupying the mountain ranges, plateaus, and river valleys in the centre of the Indian Subcontinent. The northernmost portion of the state extended onto the Bun ...
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Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh
Bilaspur, also known as "The City of Festivals", is a city located in Bilaspur District in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Bilaspur is the Administrative headquarters of the Bilaspur District and Bilaspur Division. The Chhattisgarh High Court, located at Bodri, District Bilaspur has privileged it with the title ''Nyayadhani'' (Law Capital) of the State. This city is the commercial center and business hub of North East Chhattisgarh region. It is also an important city for the Indian Railways, as it is the headquarters for South East Central Railway Zone (SECR) and the Bilaspur Railway Division. Bilaspur is also the headquarters of South Eastern Coalfields Limited. Chhattisgarh biggest power plant operated by NTPC is in Sipat. PowerGrid in Sipat pools electricity from other power plants in region and transmits electricity to Delhi via one of longest HVDC line. Bilaspur is known for its aromatic rice variety named ‘Doobraj’ rice, Handloom woven colourful soft Kosa sil ...
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