In 1945 he was General Officer in Command of the Eastern Command in India and then, in the closing days of British rule in the subcontinent, he headed Northern Command. In 1944 he commanded VIII Corps in the Battle of Normandy and later during Operation Market Garden. He eventually escaped after the fall of Mussolini in the autumn of 1943. O'Connor was captured by a German reconnaissance patrol during the night of 7 April 1941 and spent over two years in an Italian prisoner of war camp. He was the field commander for Operation Compass, in which his forces destroyed a much larger Italian army – a victory which nearly drove the Axis from Africa, and in turn, led Adolf Hitler to send the Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel to try to reverse the situation. General Sir Richard Nugent O'Connor, KT, GCB, DSO & Bar, MC (21 August 1889 – 17 June 1981) was a senior British Army officer who fought in both the First and Second World Wars, and commanded the Western Desert Force in the early years of the Second World War. Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the BathĬommandant of the Army Cadet Force, Scotland King Edward VII's Hospital, London, EnglandĢnd Infantry Battalion, Honourable Artillery Company (1917–19)
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