Alanbrooke, Alan Brooke, Viscount, 1883-1963

Field Marshal Alan Francis Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke (23 July 1883 – 17 June 1963), was a senior officer of the British Army. He was Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, during the Second World War, and was promoted to field marshal on 1 January 1944. Brooke trained as an artillery officer and became Commandant of the School of Artillery, Larkhill in 1929. He held various divisional and corps level commands before the Second World War and became C-in-C Home Forces in 1940. He then became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1941. In that role he focused on strategy and, in particular, on the Mediterranean theatre. Here, his principal aims were to rid North Africa of Axis forces and knock Italy out of the war, thereby opening up the Mediterranean for Allied shipping, and then mount the cross-Channel invasion when the Allies were ready and the Germans sufficiently weakened. He then developed the strategy for pushing back the German forces in western Europe. As chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Brooke was the foremost military advisor to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and had the role of co-ordinator of the British military efforts in the Allies' victory in 1945. After retiring from the British Army, he served as Lord High Constable of England during the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. His war diaries attracted attention for their criticism of Churchill and for Brooke's forthright views on other leading figures of the war.