Major-GeneralJohn Sydney LethbridgeCB, CBE, MC (11 December 1897 – 11 August 1961) was a British soldier. He served as a commissioned officer with the Royal Engineers on the Western Front during the early years of the First World War and later in the Middle East. He spent much of the interwar period serving in British India. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he was posted to the British Expeditionary Force in France, later serving as Commander, Royal Engineers in the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division. He spent the later war years as a staff officer. After the end of the war, he served in senior civil defence roles. He died in 1961, shortly after his retirement from the British Army.
He commanded, as acting major, a company of King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners in Afghanistan and on the North West Frontier during the Third Anglo-Afghan War from 1919 to 1922.[3] He served again with King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners at Roorkee and Rawalpindi and saw active service in Peshawar against Afridi raiders in 1930.[3] After graduating from Staff College at Quetta in 1932 he became Superintendent of Instruction at Roorkee and was then appointed a Field Works major at Chatham in 1933.[3] He joined the General Staff at Headquarters, Northern Command at York and then transferred to the Military Operations Branch and Directorate of Recruiting and Organisation at the War Office in 1936 before becoming an instructor at the Senior Officers' School at Sheerness in 1939.[3]
Lethbridge served in the Second World War with British Expeditionary Force in France in 1939 before becoming Commander Royal Engineers for the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division.[3] He went on to be deputy director of Staff Duties at the War Office in 1940, liaison officer with US Forces in London in 1942 and leader of the 'Lethbridge Mission' to study tactics and equipment required to defeat Japan in the Far East in 1943.[3] His last war appointment was as Chief of Staff for the 14th Army in Burma from 1944 under the command of Field Marshal Sir William Slim, later 1st Viscount Slim.[3]
In 1925, Lethbridge married Katharine Greville Maynard, the daughter of Sir John Maynard, KCIECSI in Shimla, India, and they had one son and two daughters.[2]
