Allegiance United Kingdom Rank Major General | Years of service 1987–present Service/branch British Army Name Richard Stanford | |
Awards Member of the Order of the British Empire | ||
Battles/wars The Troubles
Iraq War | ||
Major-General Richard James Aethelstan Stanford MBE is a British Army officer who served as General Officer Commanding Support Command.
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Military career
Stanford was commissioned into the Welsh Guards in 1987and saw active service during the Troubles in Northern Ireland for which he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in October 1993. He went on to become commanding officer of 1st Battalion the Welsh Guards in which capacity he was deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina on peace keeping duties in 2006. In 2009 he was succeeded by Rupert Thorneloe just prior to the battalion's deployment to Afghanistan and the latter was killed in action during Operation Panther's Claw. He saw active service during the Iraq War when he served as an advisor to the Head of the Iraqi Army in 2009. He became Chief of Joint Fires and Influence Branch at Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps in March 2012 and General Officer Commanding Support Command in June 2015. He will become Senior British Loan Services Officer, Oman in October 2017.
Personal life
Stanford has been married to his wife Fiona since 1995 and they have a son and a daughter. Fiona Stanford wrote the book Don't Say Goodbye: Our heroes and the families they leave behind, which is a compilation of her experience as a military wife and stories of wives, girlfriends and children of other Welsh Guards while the men were deployed to Afghanistan. It was written after seven men from 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards, including Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the Commanding Officer who succeeded her husband, were killed in action while deployed on Operation Herrick X.