Eugene Vincent Michael Strickland was born at Rawalpindi, India on 25th August 1913. In May 1917 his father died of wounds received on the Western Front leaving his mother in very reduced circumstances living off a widow’s pension. In 1922 she brought her family back to the UK and, with Irish roots, hoping to settle in Ireland. However the partition of the country brought great upheaval and Strickland, known either as Michael or ‘Strick’ attended Mayfield College, a Roman Catholic boarding school in Sussex. After attending a London crammer to prepare him for the entrance exam he was awarded a King’s Cadetship at Sandhurst which covered all essential fees. Commissioned into the Indian Army in 1934 he followed the usual path of spending his first year in India attached to a British Regiment, in this case the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry.

Although Strickland excelled at his duties and quickly developed an empathy with Indian people he was led astray by three older and more experienced officers losing money in card games and, eventually, being unable to pay his mess bill. Although this was a court-martial offence the Commanding Officer thought so highly of the young subaltern that he wrote off the debt. However, Strickland was so ashamed that he resigned his commission and returned to England. Enlisting in the Royal Tank Corps he excelled as a recruit despite spending two weeks in detention for going absent to visit his mother. It was not uncommon to find ‘gentleman soldiers’ in the ranks (another famous example being T E Lawrence), people who, for a variety of reasons wanted to escape their past, and Strickland was soon promoted to Corporal. When his regiment, 4th Royal Tank Regiment, deployed to France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1939 he was already a Sergeant. The unit was equipped by the heavily armoured but ponderous and poorly armed Matilda Mark 1 tank.

On 28th May 1940, during the withdrawal to Dunkirk, he took part in a counter attack near Arras where he fought a large enemy armoured force to a standstill taking 80 prisoners until his tank was disabled. He then made it on foot to the beaches and was evacuated. For his courage under fire, he was awarded the Military Medal and the regiment paid for a painting of his exploits. Despite pressure from his regiment to ‘re-commission’ him, Strickland had to go through the formal process, which meant attending the Royal Armoured Corps Officer Cadet Training Unit, ironically based at The Royal Military College. This made him probably the only person to be commissioned from Sandhurst twice. He was also almost immediately deployed on operations and was unable to be invested with his medal.

Strickland fought in North Africa and Italy eventually commanding 145th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps and The North Irish Horse.  Awarded the Distinguished Service Order he attended an investiture in London where King George commented that it was undoubtedly zthe first time a Military Medal and DSO had been presented together. Remaining in the Army after the war, Strickland was not promoted to substantive Lieutenant Colonel until 1955 after which he rose rapidly up the ladder. Serving for several years in Jordan as senior military advisor to the young King Hussein he was promoted to Brigadier in 1961 and Major General in 1966 serving for his final three years as Chief of the Joint Services Liaison Organisation in Germany.

Maj Gen E V M Strickland CMG DSO OBE MM died in December 1982. 

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