General Sir Richard Nelson "Windy" Gale, (25 June 1896 – 29 July 1982) was a senior officer in the British Army who served in both world wars. In the First World War he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918 whilst serving as a junior officer in the Machine Gun Corps. During the Second World War he served with 1st Parachute Brigade and then the 6th Airborne Division during the D-Day landings and Operation Tonga in 1944. After the end of the conflict, Gale remained in the army and eventually, in 1958, succeeded Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

Early life Gale was born on 25 June 1896 in London, England, to Wilfred Gale, a merchant from Hull, and his wife Helen Webber Ann, daughter of Joseph Nelson, of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. The early years of his life were spent in Australia and New Zealand due to his father's gaining employment in insurance, but the Gale family returned to England in 1906.Major-General Richard Nelson Gale Pegasus archive He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, a foundation school in the City of London, gaining an average academic record but becoming a prolific reader. After this, he attended further education at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. For a time, he was a boarder at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon.Watkins, Leslie (1953). The Story of Shakespeare's School, 1853–1953, Stratford-upon-Avon: Herald Press, & Edward Fox, p. v.

When Gale left Aldenham he wanted to become a British Army officer in the Royal Artillery, but did not possess the academic qualifications or physical grades required for entry into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Instead Gale followed in his father's footsteps and gained employment as an insurance agent, but he rapidly grew to dislike the job; determined to enter the British Army, he attended regular physical training classes and studied hard to improve his academic grades.

First World War When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Gale, only recently turned 18, was still below the medical standards required for a recruit and failed to join a Territorial Force unit in London. He finally gained entry to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in the summer of 1915 and was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment, "the regiment of my choice", as a second lieutenant on 22 December. When Gale joined the regiment, he put his name forward for a course on training with machine guns and was accepted, being transferred to the Machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Appointed to the MGC on 13 March 1916, in short order he was posted to the Western Front.

Gale was posted, in the summer of 1916, to the 164th Machine Gun Company, which was in support of the 164th (North Lancashire) Brigade of the 55th (West Lancashire) Division, a first-line formation of the Territorial Force (TF). With his company, he fought in the Battle of the Somme and, towards the end of the year, served in the Ypres Salient. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 1 November 1916, and to the substantive rank on 1 July 1917. He was next involved in the Capture of Wytschaete in June 1917 but was not involved in the Passchendaele offensive, as he was suffering from both mental and physical exhaustion, and was sent to England on leave, and diagnosed with pyorrhoea. He returned to service in January 1918, although now serving with the 126th Machine Gun Company of the 126th (East Lancashire) Brigade, part of the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division. Among the fellow officers in his new company was Major Edwin Flavell, who was to serve in Gales' later career. On 23 February the company merged into the 42nd Battalion, MGC. It was during his service as a subaltern in France that he won the Military Cross (MC). During the German spring offensive launched by the German Army in mid-March 1918, Gale was awarded his MC for 'conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty'. The citation for the MC reads:

Soon promoted to captain, Gale continued to serve on the Western Front, taking part in the Hundred Days Offensive, until the end of the war on 11 November 1918.

Between the wars When the war ended in November 1918, Gale volunteered to go to India in 1919, serving with the 12th Battalion, MGC where Captain John Harding was a fellow subaltern who, like Gale, was to attain the highest ranks in the army. However, in 1922 the MGC was disbanded and Gale reverted to serving with the Worcestershire Regiment, and served with the 3rd Battalion, Worcesters before that, too, was disbanded, with Gale transferring to the Machine Gun School in India. In 1924, he married Ethel Maude Larnack Keene.Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, Privy Council, and Order of Preference, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1963, p. 2750 In 1928 he joined the 1st Battalion, Worcesters. During his time in India he gained entry to the Staff College at Quetta, attending from 1930 to 1931, and after two years in the institution he graduated as a staff officer. Promotion prospects during the interwar years were limited, and although he received above average grades in his annual reports, he remained a subaltern for fifteen years, until he was promoted to the rank of captain in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (DCLI) on 26 February 1930.

In February 1932, Gale was seconded for service as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3) in India. He was appointed a brigade major on 1 January 1934. Gale left India in January 1936 and returned to England to serve with the DCLI, receiving a brevet promotion to major on 1 July. In February 1937 he was transferred to the War Office as a GSO2, with responsibilities for the creation of training pamphlets and publications. He transferred to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on 13 October. In December 1938 he was promoted to major and moved to the Staff Duties (Planning) section of the General Staff at the War Office.

Second World War 1939−1942

By December 1940 Gale, who had not seen service with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and Belgium, had been promoted to the acting rank of lieutenant-colonel and, wishing for a field command, was given command of the 2/5th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, a second-line Territorial Army (TA) unit that was part of Brigadier Gerard Bucknall's 138th Infantry Brigade, itself part of the 46th Infantry Division, then commanded by Major-General Charles Hudson, which had fought with the BEF. The battalion, along with the rest of the division, was serving in Scotland, reforming after having sustained very severe casualties in France, before moving to East Anglia in January 1941. Then, in the summer of 1941, the 1st Parachute Brigade was formed as part of the expansion of the British Army's newly created airborne forces, and Gale was offered command of the brigade by General Sir Alan Brooke, the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces (and soon to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff/CIGS), who was impressed with the high morale and standards in Gale's battalion; he accepted the command. In late October the 1st Airlanding Brigade, under Brigadier George Hopkinson, along with the 1st Parachute Brigade, under Gale, were assigned to the newly created 1st Airborne Division, whose first General Officer Commanding (GOC) was Major-General Frederick "Boy" Browning.

February 1942 saw Operation Biting, perhaps better known as the Bruneval Raid, take place, in which Major John Frost's 'C' Company of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, of Gales' 1st Para Brigade, was selected to participate. The raid, "a model of a combined operation on a minor scale", in Gale's own words was very successful, with the objective – to seize equipment from a German radar station in France – being achieved, although there were casualties. Frost would later command the battalion, most notably in the Battle of Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

The next few months were spent organizing the brigade, choosing officers and devising new training schemes. He later described the methods he used in his brigade:

The parachute soldier has characteristics that mark him out among men. First, he is a volunteer and, second, he has to overcome something every time he jumps. Few men will willingly hurl themselves out of an aeroplane, and when doing so they inevitably have to fight fear. Perhaps some may get callous to this, but I think that for the majority it always holds true. When a parachute soldier lands he knows that his future chances of survival rest on his personal skill. His weapon and the comparatively small amount of ammunition he can carry are all he has. He is, for some time at least, away from artillery or tank support; he may be dropped wide and find himself alone and he may be injured; but it is his battle and he knows it. When he jumps the parachute soldier gains something that he never loses.

This splendid material deserved the best officers. In forming my brigade I was fortunate in having the privilege of selecting all company commanders, the commanding officers selecting the remainder. There was no shortage of volunteers. I took as my yardstick their potential as leaders. Though leadership springs from a number of qualities, sometimes not discernible until the supreme test, there is one quality I felt to be essential; this was initiative.

Of all the characteristics the airborne soldier would expect and look for in his officers initiative is probably the most important. I tried this test by putting it in the form of a question of what an individual would do in certain circumstances, and this I tried out later when training my division. Suppose a subaltern had just landed and hears the approach of what he thinks is an enemy tank, what would he do? The answer so often was that he would get on the blower and tell his company commander; to the question what would he have done had he been a company commander in similar circumstances came a similar answer. This tendency to hang decisions on the next superior should have no place in the mental attitude of an airborne officer, for in nine cases out of ten he might never make the contact; but, even if he did, it was action that was wanted and this was where initiative came in.

Then in April 1942 Gale, by now a war-substantive lieutenant-colonel, was ordered to hand over his brigade to Edwin Flavell, formerly his company commander in France over twenty years before, and, much to his displeasure, posted back to the War Office as Deputy Director of Staff Duties (DDSD), and subsequently promoted to Director of Air. Gale's remit as Director of Air was to attempt to formulate a clear policy about the use of airborne forces between the army and the Royal Air Force (RAF), as well as to solve the aircraft shortages that stymied many attempts to conduct further airborne operations. There was a great deal of rivalry between the two services, with the RAF sure that large-scale bombing would win the conflict, and therefore unwilling to transfer any aircraft to the army for use by airborne forces.

1943−1944