Francis Davies (British Army officer)

Sir Francis Davies
Sir Francis Davies, c.1916
Born	(1864-07-03)3 July 1864 London, England
Died	18 March 1948(1948-03-18) (aged 83) Pershore, Worcestershire, England
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service / branch	British Army
Years of service	1881–1923
Rank	General
Unit	Worcestershire Regiment Grenadier Guards
Commands	Scottish Command 8th Division 1st Guards Brigade
Battles / wars	Second Boer War First World War
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

General Sir Francis John Davies, KCB, KCMG, KCVO (3 July 1864 – 18 March 1948) was a senior British Army officer who commanded the 8th Division during the First World War.

Early life and education

Davies was born in London, the son of Lieutenant General Henry Fanshawe Davies and his wife, Ellen Christine Alexandra Hankey. His grandfather was General Francis John Davies (brother and heir of Thomas Henry Hastings Davies, MP for Worcester) and his great-grandfather was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Byam Martin. The family seat was Elmley Castle, Pershore, Worcestershire. His younger brother was Major General Henry Rodolph Davies. He was educated at Eton College.

Military career

Davies was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the part-time 4th (Worcestershire Militia) Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment in July 1881. He transferred from the Worcesters to a regular commission in the Grenadier Guards, the same regiment in which his father and grandfather had served, as a lieutenant on 14 May 1884, becoming adjutant to the 2nd Battalion of his new regiment in 1893. Promoted to captain on 28 October 1895, he was in 1897 posted to South Africa where he became a deputy assistant adjutant general (DAAG) for the Cape of Good Hope, and received a further promotion to major on 12 July 1899.

After the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899, he served as a DAAG, responsible for intelligence at army headquarters in South Africa. He was appointed acting Commissioner of Police for Johannesburg in 1900, and received a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel dated 29 November 1900.

Davies returned to the United Kingdom in 1902 and was temporarily employed in the Intelligence Department until he became Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General at the War Office on 7 September 1902. Two years later he was appointed assistant director of military operations in 1904. He was the British delegate to the International Conference on Wireless Telegraphy in Berlin in 1906 and then assistant quartermaster general (AQMG) for Western Command in 1907. He was then promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general in November 1909 and made general officer commanding (GOC) of the 1st (Guards) Brigade, taking over from Arthur Henniker-Major. He then took over as brigadier general, general staff (BGGS) of Aldershot Command, taking over William Robertson. Following this, he served at the War Office in London at director of staff duties (DSD).

In October 1914, two months after the British entry into World War I, Davies was appointed as general officer commanding (GOC) of the 8th Division, which had been created only recently from Regular Army units scattered around the British Empire. The division, along with its GOC, was soon sent to the Western Front, where the rest of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was already serving, and where the division would remain for the rest of the war. The 8th, serving under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson's IV Corps, saw major action for the first time in 1915 at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March and later in the Battle of Aubers Ridge, two months later, both of which resulted in heavy casualties.

Towards the end of July Davies was posted away from the fighting in France and Belgium to take over the command of VIII Corps, then heavily engaged in the Gallipoli campaign, from Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston. Davies, promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant-general, took over as its GOC on 8 August from Major-General William Douglas, GOC 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, who in turn was in temporary command of the corps as well as his own division. He brought with him from the fierce fighting on the Western Front valuable combat experience and, it is said, "his contribution to what was a very difficult period (and the greater part) of the campaign has been largely overlooked. He inherited a shattered and demoralised corps, starved of resources and reinforcement. Over the five months of his tenure his ideas and energy were the catalyst for a myriad of tactical and systematic improvements which greatly improved the fighting efficiency of his force, allowing his troops to achieve tactical superiority over the enemy facing them".

In the aftermath of the evacuation of British and Allied forces from Gallipoli in January 1916, Davies was moved on to succeed Lieutenant General The Hon. Sir Julian Byng as GOC of IX Corps, which had also fought at Gallipoli but had now been relocated to the Western Front. Davies was in command only until June when he returned to the United Kingdom to serve as Military Secretary, a post he held until after the end of the war, finally relinquishing to Lieutenant General Sir Philip Chetwode in June 1919. His rank of lieutenant general became substantive in January 1917.

Later that year, Davies was appointed general officer commanding-in-chief (GOC-in-C) of Scottish Command in 1919; after being promoted to the rank of full general in July 1921, he retired from the army in 1923.

Freemasonry

From 1919 until his death in 1948, Davies served as Provincial Grand Master of Freemasons in Worcestershire. During his time in office, 50 new masonic lodges were dedicated and he personally participated at 41 of these. From 1935 to 1947 he also held the position of Deputy Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, paying official visits to numerous Provinces in this country and to many Grand Lodges overseas.