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, early, life, world and/or war:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”
—Bible: New Testament, Mark 16:15.
Jesus.
“Many of our German friends before the war would come as our guest to hunt wild pig. I refused to invite Goering. I could not tolerate his killing a wild pig— seemed too much like brother against brother.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz, U.S. director, screenwriter. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Countess (Danielle Darrieux)