George Rowland Patrick Roupell

Brigadier George Rowland Patrick Roupell, (7 April 1892 – 4 March 1974) was a senior officer in the British Army and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Early life and military career George Roupell was born into a military family; his father, Francis Frederick Fyler Roupell, having served with the British Army in the 70th Regiment and commanded the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment from 1895 to 1899, and was promoted to colonel in 1901. George's father had married Edith Maria Bryden at Kingston in 1887. Roupell was educated at Rossall School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment on 2 March 1912 and was appointed a lieutenant on 29 April 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. First World War At the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, the 1st Battalion the East Surreys were deployed as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into northern Belgium. Roupell commanded a platoon in the BEF's first major action, the Battle of Mons, in August 1914. Roupell kept a diary throughout the war, which has since been a, sometimes humorous, source of insight and observation on the events that he witnessed and participated in. In the trenches at Mons he recounted how he had to hit his men on the backside with his sword in order to gain their attention and remind them to fire low as they had been taught.