Montagu Brocas Burrows

Educated at Eton College and Oxford University,[1] Burrows was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 5th Dragoon Guards, British Army.[2] He served in the First World War and became a prisoner of war.[1] He was deployed to the Murmansk coast with the North Russia Expeditionary Force in 1918.[2] In the 1920s he played cricket for Surrey County Cricket Club.[1][3]

He remained in the army and continued to serve during the interwar period; he became adjutant at Oxford University Officers' Training Corps (OTC) in 1920 and an instructor at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1922.[2] After attending the Staff College, Camberley from 1925 to 1926, he became brigade major with the Nowshera Infantry Brigade in India in 1928 and then joined the 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot in 1930.[2] He was on the General Staff at the War Office from 1935 to 1938 when he became the military attaché in Rome.[2][3]

He also served in the Second World War, initially as General Officer Commanding (GOC) 9th Armoured Division, for which he was promoted to acting major general on 1 December 1940,[4] in the United Kingdom from December 1940 to March 1942.[5] During this period he led Brocforce comprising the 9th East Surrey Regiment, two companies of artillery and a Pioneer battalion.[6] He was subsequently GOC 11th Armoured Division from October 1942 to December 1943 and was appointed Head of the British Military Mission to the Soviet Union in 1944.[2][3]

After the war he became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of West Africa Command; he retired in 1946.[2][3]

• Smart, Nick (2005). Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. ISBN 1844150496.

• Generals of World War