Early Life and The First World War
O'Connor was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, India, on 21 August 1889. His father was a major in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and his mother was the daughter of a former Governor of India's central provinces. He attended Tonbridge Castle School in 1899 and The Towers School in Crowthorne in 1902. In 1903, after his father's death in an accident, he transferred to Wellington School in Somerset. He attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1908. In September of the following year he was commissioned, and posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Cameronians. He would maintain close ties with the unit for the rest of his life. In January 1910, the battalion was rotated to Colchester, where he received signals and rifle training. It was then stationed in Malta from 1911 to 1912 where O'Connor served as Regimental Signals Officer.
During World War I, O'Connor served as Signals Officer of 22 Brigade in the 7th Division and captain in command of 7th Division's Signals Company. From October 1916, as a captain and later as a brevet major, he served as brigade major of 91 Brigade, 7th Division. He was awarded the Military Cross in February 1915. In March of that year he saw action at Arras and Bullecourt. O'Connor was awarded the DSO and appointed brevet lieutenant-colonel in command of 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Honourable Artillery Company, part of the 7th Division, in June 1917. In November, the division was ordered to support the Italians against the Austro-Hungarian forces at the River Piave which then formed part of the Italian Front. In late October 1918 the 2nd Battalion captured the island of Grave di Papadopoli on the Piave River for which O'Connor received the Italian Silver Medal of Honour (Medaglia d'Argento al Valor Militare) and a bar to his DSO.
At the end of the war, O'Connor reverted to his rank of captain and served as regimental adjutant from April to December 1919.
Read more about this topic: Richard O'Connor
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, world and/or war:
“Foolish prater, What dost thou
So early at my window do?
Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
By all that waking eyes may see.
Thou this damage to repair
Nothing half so sweet and fair,
Nothing half so good, canst bring,
Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.”
—Yasir Arafat (b. 1929)
“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)