Wilfrid Malleson

Major-General Sir Wilfrid Malleson KCIE CB (8 September 1866 – 24 January 1946) was a major-general in the British Indian Army who led a mission to Turkestan during the Russian Civil War.

Wilfrid Malleson

Life

Malleson born in Baldersby, Yorkshire. was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1886. In 1904 he transferred to the Indian Army and accompanied Sir Louis Dane on his mission to Kabul, Afghanistan, 1904–1905. He was posted to British East Africa, where he was appointed Inspector General of Communications. He participated in the Battle of Salaita and the Battle of Latema Nek.

He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in August 1916.[1]

He then led the British Military Mission to Turkestan between 16 July 1918 – 5 April 1919, aiming to block possible German-Turkish thrusts towards India and Afghanistan.[2] In August 1918, he dispatched a British Indian Army force consisting of a machine gun detachment comprising 40 Punjabi troops and a British officer to resist the Bolsheviks near Meru in what was the first direct confrontation between British and Russian troops since the Crimea War.[3] He led the Malleson Mission an effort to curtail German and Turkish influence in the area, and to assist the Transcaspian Government against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. Malleson was forced to withdraw in April 1919 however.[2]

Later he participated in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. He was involved in military intelligence, running a spy network from Meshed in north-eastern Iran against the Russians during this period. For his services, Malleson was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) on 1 January 1920.[4]

He retired from the Indian Army on 30 October 1920.[5]

Personal aspects

In 1894, he married Ida Kathleen King, daughter of Frederick St Aubyn King.[6] Their son Wilfred St. Aubyn Malleson was awarded the Victoria Cross.

He died in Newton Abbot in 1946.

See also

Notes
  1. London Gazette 18 August 1916.
  2. Cain 1996, p. 93.
  3. On Secret Service East of Constantinople by Peter Hopkirk, John Murray, 1994.
  4. "No. 32001". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 July 1920. p. 8050.
  5. Indian Army List supplement January 1924.
  6. India, Select Marriages, 1792–1948.

References
  • Milton, Giles Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot, Sceptre, 2013. ISBN 978 1 444 73702 8.
  • Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan, by Rafis Abazov, Scarecrow Press, 2005.
  • Cain, Frank (1996). Charles Howard (Dick) (1895–1975), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. p. 93.
  • On Secret Service East of Constantinople, by Peter Hopkirk, John Murray 1994, p. 340.
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