Bertram Sergison-Brooke

Lieutenant General Sir Bertram Norman Sergison-Brooke, (born Brooke; 20 July 1880 – 26 March 1967) was an Anglo-Irish senior British Army officer who served as Major-General commanding the Brigade of Guards and General Officer Commanding (GOC) London District. Early life and education Brooke was born in London, the fourth son of Arthur Basil Brooke and Alice Georgina Norton. He was a grandson of Sir Arthur Brooke, 2nd Baronet and a cousin of Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke. The Brookes were a prominent Anglo-Irish family that had been settled in Northern Ireland since prior to the Plantation of Ulster. He was educated at Eton College and passed out of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1899. Military career Brooke was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards as a second lieutenant on 12 August 1899. He served in the Second Boer War in South Africa, and was promoted to lieutenant on 14 December 1900. Following the end of the war in June 1902 he returned with most of the men of the guards regiments on board the SS Lake Michigan, which arrived in Southampton in October 1902. He then served with the Egyptian Army. He also served in the First World War, initially as Assistant Embarkation Officer in Southampton and then as a brigade major in France. By 1917 he was commanding 2nd Guards Brigade but was gassed on the Western Front. He was mentioned in dispatches seven times throughout the war.