Richard Craddock
Sir Richard Walter Craddock KBE CB DSO was a senior officer of the British Army who achieved high office in the 1960s.Military career
Educated at Charterhouse School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Richard Craddock was commissioned into the Royal East Kent Regiment in 1930.
He served in the Second World War, initially in the British Expeditionary Force in the Battle of France; in 1943 he was a member of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill's delegation to Washington, D.C., Quebec, and Cairo. In 1944 he became Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers, fighting in North West Europe, in which capacity he earned a DSO, before moving on to be Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, which was also serving in North West Europe, later that year. He was wounded in action several times, losing one foot and part of a leg.
After the War he remained in the Army and in 1949 became Military Assistant to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, moving on to a posting as Director of Plans at the War Office in 1951.
He was appointed Major General in charge of Administration for the British Army of the Rhine in West Germany in 1957 and became Director of Military Operations at the War Office in 1959. He served as Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong from 1963 to 1964, when he became GOC Western Command; he retired in 1966.
In 1965 he was made Colonel of the Queen's Own Buffs, The Royal Kent Regiment, becoming colonel of the Queen's Regiment in 1966 after amalgamation, a position he held until 1973.
