Allegiance United Kingdom Service/branch Royal Marines Years of service 1913–1948 Rank Major general | Name Arthur Chater Died 1979 | |
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Battles/wars World War I
World War II Awards Order of the Bath, Royal Victorian Order, Distinguished Service Order, Order of the British Empire People also search for Guglielmo Nasi, Carlo De Simone, Alfred Reade Godwin-Austen | ||
Battles and wars World War I, World War II | ||
Major General Arthur Reginald Chater CB, CVO, DSO, OBE (1896–1979) was an officer in the Royal Marines during the First World War, the interwar years, and Second World War.
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Military career
Chater was commissioned into the Royal Marines in 1913 in served in the First World War and saw action with the Chatham Battalion of the Royal Marine Brigade at Antwerp in Belgium in 1914. He fought on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey from 28 April to 12 May 1915, and in March 1918 he participated in the Allied raid on Zeebrugge.
During the inter-war period Chater served with the Egyptian Army and the Sudan Camel Corps. He became Commanding Officer of the Sudan Camel Corps in 1927, Commander of military operations in Kordofan in Sudan in 1929 and Senior Royal Marines Officer at the East Indies Station in 1931. He served in the Second World War as Military-Governor of British Somaliland from 1941, as Commander of the Portsmouth Division of the Royal Marines from 1943 and as Director of Combined Operations for India and South East Asia from 1944.
Papers related to his service are held in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London, and comprise notes on Operation Lightning for the capture of Akyab Island, Burma, on 3 January 1945; photographs of amphibious landings by 15 Indian Corps at Kangaw, Burma, January 1945; and notes on combined operations training of allied forces for Operation Zipper, the planned invasion of Malaya, August 1945.
He was made a companion of the Distinguished Service Order. He became Commander of the Chatham Group of Royal Marines in 1946 and retired in 1948.
Honours
Chater was made a companion of the Order of the Bath, a commander of the Royal Victorian Order, and a member of the Order of the British Empire.