Richard O'Connor

Sir Richard Nugent O'Connor, KT, GCB, DSO, MC, ADC (21 August 1889 –  17 June 1981) was a British Army general who commanded the Western Desert Force in the early years of World War II. He was the field commander for Operation Compass, in which his forces completely destroyed a much larger Italian army — a victory which nearly drove the  Axis from Africa entirely, and in turn, led Adolf Hitler to send the German Africa Corps under Erwin Rommel to try and reverse the situation. 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 eventually escaped in December 1943, and in 1944 commanded VIII Corps in Normandy and later during Operation Market Garden. In 1945 he was General Officer in Command of the Eastern Command in India, and then headed the North Western Army in the closing days of British rule in the subcontinent.
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