Horace Martelli Explained

Honorific Prefix:Sir
Horace Martelli
Birth Date:17 July 1877
Allegiance: United Kingdom
Serviceyears:1912–1939
Branch: British Army
Battles:World War I
World War II
Awards:Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Companion of the Order of the Bath
Distinguished Service Order

Major-General Sir Horace de Courcy Martelli (17 July 1877 – 11 March 1959) was a British Army officer who became Lieutenant Governor of Jersey.

Military career

Educated at the Haileybury (1887-1891), Bedford School (1891-1895), and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst,[1] Martelli won the Royal Humane Society's Bronze Medal when aged twenty for rescuing a boy from drowning at Southsea on 2 August 1897.[2] He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1912,[3] and served in World War I as deputy director of Railway Transport for the British Expeditionary Force, as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General at General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force and then as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General for 25th Division before becoming Assistant Quartermaster General for 9th Army Corps in France in 1916.[3] He continued his war service as Temporary Assistant Adjutant General at the War Office from 1917 and than as Assistant Director Mobilisation at the War Office from 1918.[3]

He went on to be Assistant Director Quartering at the War Office in 1920, Assistant Quartermaster General at Eastern Command in 1921 and Commander, Royal Artillery for 42nd (East Lancashire) Division in 1925.[3] He was appointed Base Commandant for the Shanghai Defence Force in China in 1927 before reverting to the role of Commander, Royal Artillery for 42nd (East Lancashire) Division again in 1928.[3] His last appointments were as Major-General in charge of Administration at Southern Command in Salisbury in 1930 and as Lieutenant Governor of Jersey in 1934 before he retired in 1939.[3]

In retirement he commanded 8th Bn Wiltshire Home Guard.[3]

Family

In 1904 he married Ethel Mary Douglas.[4]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: United Services College . 15 May 2011 . 20 March 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120320011835/http://www.haileybury.com/medals/dso%20USC.htm . dead .
  2. http://www.haileybury.com/medals/saving_life.htm Saving life
  3. Web site: Martelli, Horace. https://web.archive.org/web/20121001071110/http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/locreg/MARTELLI.shtml . dead . 1 October 2012 . Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. 12 June 2020.
  4. https://books.google.com/books?id=wEFuRPsYHwwC&dq=Sir+Horace+Martelli&pg=PA306 Burke's landed gentry of Great Britain by Peter Beauclerk Dewar