Henry Rodolph Davies

Henry Rodolph Davies CB
Born	(1865-09-21)21 September 1865
Died	4 January 1950(1950-01-04) (aged 84)
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Rank	Major-General
Commands held	2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry 11th (Northern) Division 49th (West Riding) Division
Battles/wars	Third Anglo-Burmese War Second Boer War First World War
Awards	Companion of the Order of the Bath, Mentioned in Dispatches

Major-General Henry Rodolph Davies, CB (21 September 1865 - 4 January 1950) was a British Army officer, who commanded the 11th (Northern) Division during the First World War.

Davies was born in 1865, the son of Henry Fanshawe Davies, an army officer who would later rise to the rank of Lieutenant-General. He was educated at Eton and then joined the Army, seeing service as a young officer at the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1887-88), then the Tirah Campaign (1897-98), where he was mentioned in despatches, the Boxer Rebellion (1900), and the Second Boer War (1901-1902). In 1911, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and given command of the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.^[1]

On the outbreak of the First World War, the 2nd Battalion was at Aldershot and was mobilised as part of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Division, in the British Expeditionary Force.^[2] Davies remained in command of the battalion through the first campaigns on the Western Front, until promoted to take command of the 3rd Brigade in 1915. He remained with the brigade until transferred to the 33rd Brigade in 11th (Northern) Division in 1917. In May of that year, after Major-General Archibald Ritchie was wounded, Davies took command of the division; he commanded it until the Armistice and relinquished command when it was demobilised in 1919. During the war, he was mentioned in dispatches eight times and rose from a Lieutenant-Colonel to Major-General.^[1]

After the end of the war, he commanded the reformed 49th (West Riding) Division in the Territorial Army, and retired in 1923. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath. He died in 1950.^[1]

References

• Edmonds, J. E. (1922). Military Operations France and Belgium 1914: Mons, the Retreat to the Seine, the Marne and the Aisne August–October 1914. History of the Great War. Macmillan & Co.