Giffard LeQuesne Martel
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Lieutenant-General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...
Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel (10 October 1889 – 3 September 1958) was a British Army officer who served in both the
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and Second World Wars. Familiarly known as "Q Martel" or just "Q", he was a pioneering British military engineer and tank strategist.


Early life and military career

Born into a traditional military family he was the son of
Brigadier-General Brigadier general or Brigade general is a military rank used in many countries. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries. The rank is usually above a colonel, and below a major general or divisional general. When appointed ...
Sir Charles Philip Martel who was Chief Superintendent of Ordnance Factories. He married Maud Mackenzie on 29 July 1922 and they had one son. Martel entered the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...
in 1908 and was commissioned as a
second lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...
into the British Army's
Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...
on 23 July 1909. Martel was instrumental in the establishment of The Royal Navy and Army Boxing Association in 1911 and was Army and Inter Services boxing champion both before and after World War I.


First World War

During the First World War, in 1916, as a sapper officer with direct experience of the first British use of tanks on the
Somme __NOTOC__ Somme or The Somme may refer to: Places *Somme (department), a department of France *Somme, Queensland, Australia *Canal de la Somme, a canal in France *Somme (river), a river in France Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Somme'' (book), a ...
, Martel was put in charge of recreating a wide replica of the British and German trench systems, complete with
no man's land No man's land is waste or unowned land or an uninhabited or desolate area that may be under dispute between parties who leave it unoccupied out of fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dump ...
, at Elveden, Norfolk, as part of a tank training ground. There he developed a keen interest in tank theory believing them to be the future of warfare and in November 1916 he wrote a paper, ''A Tank Army'', suggesting an army composed entirely of armoured vehicles. As
J. F. C. Fuller Major-General John Frederick Charles "Boney" Fuller (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, known as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising pr ...
's
GSO3 A military staff or general staff (also referred to as army staff, navy staff, or air staff within the individual services) is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military ...
the wide-ranging ideas set out in this paper profoundly influenced Fuller's thinking which at the time simply regarded the tank as no more than a useful adjunct to infantry on the battlefield. Martel was also interested in the construction of wire net roads as deployed in the British Army's 1917–1918 campaign in the Sinai and Palestine and their use in supporting tracked vehicles. In late 1916, Martel was on Hugh Elles' staff at
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in France assisting Fuller on the operational planning. In addition to his MC (1915) and DSO (1916), in the course of the war Martel was
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five times.


Between the wars

After the Armistice with Germany, now a
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, Martel was able to combine his two interests of tanks and military bridging when he became head of the
Experimental Bridging Establishment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
at Christchurch, Hampshire, which researched the possibilities of using tanks for battlefield engineering purposes such as bridge-laying and
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-clearing. Here he continued trials on modified Mark V tanks. The bridging component involved an assault bridge, designed by Major Charles Inglis RE, the Canal Lock Bridge, which had sufficient length to span a
canal lock A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water lev ...
. Martel, who attended the
Staff College, Camberley Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army and the presidency armies of British India (later merged to form the Indian Army). It had its origins in the Royal Military College, High Wycombe, founded in 1799, which i ...
, from 1921 to 1922, also developed his new bridging concept at the EBE, the Martel bridge, a modular box girder bridge suitable for military use. The Martel bridge was adopted by the British Army in 1925 as the "Large Box Girder Bridge". A smaller version, the Small Box Girder Bridge, was also formally adopted by the Army in 1932 and copied by many countries, including Germany, who called their version the ( for short). The United States created a copy, the H-20. The modular construction of the basic Martel bridge was also used for the Bailey bridge. In 1954, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors awarded Martel £500 for infringement on the design of his bridge by the designer of the Bailey bridge, Donald Bailey. Martel also continued to pursue his interest in tanks independently. In 1925 he built, in his own garage, a one-man tankette powered by a car engine and capable of a speed of . After a demonstration to the War Office, Morris Commercial Cars was contracted to build four test models, the first of which was delivered in 1926. Carden Loyd Tractors built a similar one-man machine, the Carden Loyd One Man Tankette. In 1927, eight more Martel tankettes were ordered to assess their potential role in forward reconnaissance. They were tested along with two-man
Carden Loyd tankette The Carden Loyd tankettes were a series of British tankettes of the period between the World Wars, the most successful of which was the Mark VI, the only version built in significant numbers. It became a classic tankette design worldwide, was l ...
s in manoeuvres with the Experimental Mechanized Force on
Salisbury Plain Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in the south western part of central southern England covering . It is part of a system of chalk downlands throughout eastern and southern England formed by the rocks of the Chalk Group and largely lies wi ...
in 1927 and 1928. The idea for a single-man fighting vehicle was soon dropped as it became apparent that one operator could not control the vehicle at the same time as firing a weapon and the British Army requirement for a light tank, the Light Tank Mark I, was a development of the Carden Loyd tankette. Morris Motors tried developing a two-man version of the Martel design and Crossley Motors a further version - the
Morris-Martel The Morris-Martel was a British inter-war tankette developed from prototypes designed by Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel. Intended for reconnaissance, eight were constructed for the Experimental Mechanized Force The Experimen ...
- in 1927 with Kégresse rubber tracks but after two prototypes were tested the project was abandoned. In 1928, the Tank and Tracked Transport Advisory Committee that Martel was a member of became the Mechanical Warfare Board which was to liaise with industry and to advise on technical matters relating to "mechanised transport". In 1929, Martel was seconded to the
King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners 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 Ben ...
and then served as an instructor at the
British Indian Army The British Indian Army, commonly referred to as the Indian Army, was the main military of the British Raj before its dissolution in 1947. It was responsible for the defence of the British Indian Empire, including the princely states, which co ...
's Staff College in Quetta from 1930 until 1934, after which he attended the Imperial Defence College. From 1936 until 1939, Martel served at the War Office, first as Assistant Director of Mechanisation, then from 1938 as the Deputy Director with the temporary rank of Brigadier.''The Times'', Saturday, 22 Jan 1938; pg. 7; Issue 47899; col G In 1936, he attended along with Wavell a large-scale tank exercise in the Belorussian Military District of the Soviet Union in which large numbers of the Soviet BT tanks took part. Martel pressured for a similar fast tank design to be investigated for addition to British tank brigades and convinced the General Staff to issue a specification for a cruiser tank.


Second World War

Martel was appointed General Officer Commanding the 50th Northumbrian Division, Territorial Army in February 1939 with the rank of major-general. The division had been converted from October 1938 to "motorised" with the whole of the infantry being carried by large lorries. The 50th Division embarked for France on 14 September 1939 as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). There, on 21 May 1940 during the
Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of French Third Rep ...
, Martel directed the tank attack on the 7th Panzer Division in the Battle of Arras in which the German frontline was driven back eight miles. Following the BEF's evacuation, Martel became the Commander of the Royal Armoured Corps in 1940 where he put his theories of armoured warfare to good use. In March 1941, he gave the
military attaché A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission, often an embassy. This type of attaché post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer, who retains a commission while serving with an embassy. Opport ...
of the neutral United States in London, Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee, a report outlining his experiences and assessment of the German armoured tactics in France. In March 1943, Martel became the Head of the Military Mission to the Soviet Union. He assessed the effectiveness of the Soviet order of battle and tactics during a visit to the front line in the
Kursk Kursk ( rus, Курск, p=ˈkursk) is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym rivers. The area around Kursk was the site of a turning point in the Soviet–German stru ...
-
Oryol Oryol ( rus, Орёл, p=ɐˈrʲɵl, lit. ''eagle''), also transliterated as Orel or Oriol, is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast situated on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow. It is part of the Central Fed ...
region between 11 and 19 May 1943. His reports based on his visit to the Soviet front line and his discussions with the Red Army Tank Directorate concluded that the Soviet battlefield experience would be far more relevant to armoured tactics in the forthcoming
Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The operat ...
than that of the experience of the British Army in the North African Campaign. Martel's intelligence-gathering and his clear and perceptive analyses of the Soviet military position were commended by his superiors at the War Office but with the arrival of the new and overtly anti-communist Head of RAF Mission, Air Marshal Sir John Babington in September 1943 his working relationship with the Soviets deteriorated with a marked decline in co-operation. He was recalled, being replaced by Lieutenant-General Montagu Burrows and left Moscow on 7 February 1944. Later that month, he lost his right eye as a result of a German bombing raid on London.


Subsequent life

Martel was knighted in 1943, with the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath following in 1944. He retired from the army in 1945 with the rank of lieutenant-general. He stood unsuccessfully as the
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candidate for the Barnard Castle
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in the
1945 UK General Election The 1945 United Kingdom general election was a national election held on 5 July 1945, but polling in some constituencies was delayed by some days, and the counting of votes was delayed until 26 July to provide time for overseas votes to be bro ...
. On his retirement, Martel wrote on military matters. He died at his home in
Camberley Camberley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately south-west of Central London. The town is in the far west of the county, close to the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire. Once part of Windsor Forest, Cambe ...
,
Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
, on 3 September 1958.


References


Publications

* * * * * * *


Bibliography

* * * * Tucker, Spencer (2001) ''Who's Who in Twentieth Century Warfare'', Psychology Press


External links


Martel, Sir Giffard Le Quesne (1889–1958)
History and the Headlines ABC CLIO
Image of Le Q Martel at National Portrait Gallery


{{DEFAULTSORT:Martel, Giffard Le Quesne 1889 births 1958 deaths Academics of the Staff College, Quetta British military attachés British Army personnel of World War I British Army generals of World War II Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Companions of the Distinguished Service Order Recipients of the Military Cross Royal Engineers officers History of the tank Alumni of the Royal College of Defence Studies Graduates of the Staff College, Camberley Conservative Party (UK) parliamentary candidates British Army lieutenant generals Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich Military personnel from Southampton