Major-General Frederick Gerard Peake, (12 June 1886 – 30 March 1970), known as Peake Pasha, was a British Army and police officer and creator of the Arab Legion.
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Military career
The son of Lieutenant Colonel Walter Peake, of Melton Mowbray, Peake was born at Epsom on 12 June 1886. He attended Stubbington House School, Fareham, and graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1906, being commissioned into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. He served in India from 1908 to 1913.
During the First World War, Peake served with the Royal Flying Corps in Salonica, and was also an officer serving with the Imperial Camel Corps, part of the British Imperial Egyptian Army, seeing action in the Darfur Expedition. In 1917 he was awarded the Order of the Nile, Fourth Class. He served for a time under Lawrence of Arabia.
In September 1920 Peake, then a captain, left the Imperial Camel Corps to report on the security situation in Transjordan. Security was found to be inadequate, and in October the same year Peake, by then promoted to lieutenant colonel, was ordered by the High Commissioner of Palestine to form two small police forces:
The Mobile Force, 100 men to guard the Palestine–Amman road.