Your favorite military commanders thoughout history?

[OMGeverynameistaken]

When it comes to military commanders, there is one man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. A true paragon, a mastermind of all aspects of the military machine, a veritable god amoung men. This man, who dedicated his life to fighting the scourge of silliness, this elite soldier of the British military, has no name. He is anonymous, unknown, his motivations and origins a mystery, shrouded in time.

We know him only by his rank.

He is...



The Colonel.

[Saint-Thor]

So many picked Rommel yet not one really knows what he's done.

Rommel. Good general and apparently a good man from what I've heard.

The guy ordered Jews to walk on mine fields near Tripoli. Seriously why would you list Rommel if you don't really know him? Damn you Churchill for over glorifying the man.

It might just be my patriotism speaking here, but George Washington was a pretty good general under the circumstances.

I think it's the patriotism. Beaten by the French at Necessity. You can find an English translation of his surrender here. The original version was in French. We have the original in the archives in Montréal.

When it comes to military commanders, there is one man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. A true paragon, a mastermind of all aspects of the military machine, a veritable god amoung men. This man, who dedicated his life to fighting the scourge of silliness, this elite soldier of the British military, has no name. He is anonymous, unknown, his motivations and origins a mystery, shrouded in time.

We know him only by his rank.

He is...

(Image)

The Colonel.

I feared for a second you were going to post Montgomery.

[Shove Piggy Shove]

The British cavalry was eliminated at Waterloo

Not really:

Many popular histories suggest that the British heavy cavalry were destroyed as a viable force following their first, epic charge. Examination of eyewitness accounts reveal, however, that far from being ineffective, they continued to provide very valuable services. They counter-charged French cavalry numerous times (both brigades),[71] halted a combined cavalry and infantry attack (Household Brigade only),[72][73] were used to bolster the morale of those units in their vicinity at times of crisis, and filled gaps in the Anglo-allied line caused by high casualties in infantry formations (both brigades).[74]

Plus, you have to remember the weather conditions the night before the battle; the ground was so muddy that cavalry and artillery had difficulty maneuvering; this would place a lot more difficulty onto an attacking army than on a defending army

Something which Napoleon would have been well aware of, and yet he chose to attack anyway - military genius at work?

[Ayreonia]

General Calculus obviously.

Not General Relativity? I'm shocked.

Is he the one who fought together with Captain Obvious and Sergeant Pepper?

[Jamessonia]

Erwin Rommel - Quick, clever, intelligent.
He took the crappy Italian Africa army, and with a little help from his Afrika Korps, almost beat the British.

Napoleon Bonaparte - One of the military geniuses of his time. Until his ill planned invasion of Russia, he was the master of Europe. Also, his story is very inspirational. Started as nothing, became Emperor.

Frederick the Great - Also the military genius of his time. Napoleon, when visiting his tomb in Potsdam, said that had he been alive then Napoleon wouldn't be there. Saved his nation multiple times, including the Seven Years' War.

Helmuth von Moltke - A great Prussian military strategist. Led his nation in the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War. His son also became a leader, in WWI.

[Terrordome]

General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay "insanity" Melchett KCB VC DSO.

Beeeehh!

[Independent Wessex]

Pyrrhus of Epirus- Very underrated.

Antiochus the great

[Josh Beaty]

Robert E. Lee

He often falls short in the eys of many people because he happened to fight for the Confederacy during the US Civil War. He was an excellent military leader, he just did not have all of the resources that were available to the Union armies.

[Transoxthraxia]

Władysław Jabłonowski. Simply for his pure ballsiness fighting the Russians.

[Untaroicht]

Vlad the III of Walachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler.

He did the impossible: use psychological warfare against the fanatical berserker-like ottoman hordes. When they start running away at the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses, you know vlad had some idea of the human psyche during warfare.

[Miracum-Izmir]

Hannibal ftw

[The UK in Exile]

Robert E. Lee

He often falls short in the eys of many people because he happened to fight for the Confederacy during the US Civil War. He was an excellent military leader, he just did not have all of the resources that were available to the Union armies.

resources doesn't quite explain why he thought a frontal assault across a mile and a half of open ground against prepared positions was sensible. Nor quite why he elected to fight an army that outnumbered him so very badly at Antietam.

[Kouralia]

Arthur Wellesley - because fuck being beaten.

Well, actually, I wrote an essay on this, basically, for my school's Sixth Form Essay Competition.

(Excerpts from) ‘Play up! and play the game!’ – To what extent has ‘Britishness’ been demonstrated by British Officers?

'Frankly, I had enjoyed the war...'

Adrian Carton de Wiart was born in Belgium and was sent to boarding school in Britain. Whereupon in 1899 he signed up as ‘Trooper Carton’ in the British Army, claimed to be six years older than he was and was sent to South Africa. Having been invalided home after being shot, he was commissioned before returning to South Africa. In Somaliland he was again shot – this time twice in the face, losing his eye and part of his ear (London Gazette, 15/5/15). Throughout World War One he was wounded seven times and even removed his own fingers after a doctor refused to operate on them (Hastings 2007, p446). Gaining a Victoria Cross in 1916, he later described his experiences in the war as ‘so much fun’ (Carton de Wiart, p89). He then involved himself with the British Embassy in Poland, the German Invasions of Poland and Norway, Ireland, and was flying to Yugoslavia in 1941 when his plane was forced down in the sea – resulting in the one-armed man swimming a mile to Italian Controlled Libya. As a prisoner in Italy he then made five escape attempts, including seven months of tunnelling, resulting in spending eight days on the run in Italy before being recaptured: while being a 61 year old, one-armed, eye patch-wearing, scarred man who couldn’t speak Italian. He was described as holding the ‘record for bad language’ in the camp (Ranfurly, p123) before being taken by the Italians to become an ambassador of good faith as they attempted to surrender.

'Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.'

Jack Churchill, while having a shorter career, was undoubtedly far more ‘eccentric’. Quoted as saying ‘any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly armed’, he was the only known British Soldier to kill an enemy using a Longbow (Young 1969). As Three Commando 2IC, and later Two Commando OC, he led landings at Vågsøy, Catania and Salerno with his broadsword at his hip, with his bow and arrow on his back and with bagpipes under his arm (Parker, p133). In Yugoslavia he was captured after a mortar shell killed or wounded his entire complement of Commandos, being knocked out by grenades mid-way through playing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" (Parker, pp150-152). While in captivity he attempted to walk to the Baltic alongside an RAF Officer in order to escape. Following that, near the end of the war he convinced an Army unit commander to relieve the SS Garrison of the camp after concerns were raised over the possibility of executions (Koblank 2006). Rounding off the war he walked one hundred and fifty miles to Verona to reach a US force and was sent to Burma to fight the Japanese. Upon arriving in India he remarked ‘If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years’ (Smith, 2005) after hearing the Atomic Bombs had forced the Japanese to surrender. After the war he continued in the British Army, being deployed in Palestine before retiring.

"Attend a German school sir? I would rather cut my hands off and blind myself in one eye. Only an English school is good enough for me."
(young Wintle, on being told by his father that he was to attend a German school)

Lieutenant Colonel A.D. Wintle is possible one of the most eccentric people to have lived – even when compared to the above. In World War One his first action resulted in him being covered with the entrails of his recently-introduced Platoon Sergeant as a mortar strike erupted around him. Petrified, he stood to attention, saluted and began singing the National Anthem, later writing: ‘Within thirty seconds I was able to become again an Englishman of action and to carry out calmly the duties I had been trained to perform.’ (Wintle, 1968) During the War he also captured the village of Vesle singlehandedly, stating after he handed it over to the official attacking force of New Zealanders that, while he had no recollection of his actions, ‘It does sound the sort of thing I'd do’. In Ypres he was escorting a gun carriage across land when a shell burst, killing the horse and hospitalising him, his first words allegedly being ‘Is the horse alright?’ While at said hospital he discovered that a trooper of his regiment was dying of Scarlet Fever in bed, so he shoved the doctors aside and said the following: ‘Now look here. It's against Kings Regulations for a Dragoon to die in bed. Now I order you to stop dying at once! And when you do get up, get your bloody hair cut!’. Trooper Cedric Mays recovered and lived to the age of 95. In World War Two Wintle was imprisoned in the tower for threatening Air Commodore A.R. Boyle with a pistol after the RAF Officer refused to give him a plane to fly to France and rally the French Air Force to relocate to Britain. En-route to the Tower, the Private escorting him lost the warrant, so he declared the man incompetent and ordered him to remain there. The Colonel then travelled back to the office and looked for an Officer to sign a new warrant; finding he was the highest ranked officer present Wintle signed his own arrest warrant and returned to the train (Wintle, 1968) (TvTropes). His eccentricity didn’t stop here, as he was released with two of three charges dropped and an official reprimand for the ‘threatening with a gun’. After a deployment to Syria he was then sent to Vichy France undercover to report on the state of British PoWs. Betrayed, tried as a spy and imprisoned, the English Officer then proceeded to explain to his captors that it was his duty to escape – escaping shortly afterwards. After being recaptured, he went on hunger strike for thirteen days because of the ‘slovenly appearance of the guards who are not fit to guard an English officer!’ (Wintle 1968). This relented when they paraded in their best uniform, however he still frequently reprimanded them for being cowardly traitors until he escaped successfully by sawing through his cell’s window’s bars. Following this, as stated by the Commander of the prison on the Colonel’s ‘This Is Your Life’, ‘because of Wintle's dauntless determination to maintain English standards and his constant challenge to our authority’ the entire garrison of over 250 men defected to the resistance (Wintle, p242).

"Don't worry, I've got an umbrella."

Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter had a shorter career of eccentricity by these standards, yet still managed to top many of the preceding acts in Operation Market Garden. He lead bayonet charges against German Infantry while brandishing an umbrella and wearing a bowler hat, trained his men in the use of the bugle for inter-company communication, disabled a German Armoured Car with an umbrella-thrust to the driver’s view port, and stated the reason he carried it was because ‘it would be quite obvious to anyone that the bloody fool carrying the umbrella could only be an Englishman’ thus solving the problem of him not remembering the passwords (Pegasus Archive). The Major notably escorted the Battalion Padre across a street in the middle of a mortar strike, saying ‘Don't worry, I've got an umbrella.’, and used it when inspecting defences: citing his reason for carrying it as ‘…what if it rains?’ (Pegasus Archive). The Major was captured after the defence of Arnhem failed, before escaping and being disguised as a deaf and dumb son of a lawyer by the Dutch Resistance, eventually leading roughly a Battalion-strength of men back to Allied Lines.

[Nazis in Space]

When it comes to military commanders, there is one man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. A true paragon, a mastermind of all aspects of the military machine, a veritable god amoung men. This man, who dedicated his life to fighting the scourge of silliness, this elite soldier of the British military, has no name. He is anonymous, unknown, his motivations and origins a mystery, shrouded in time.

We know him only by his rank.

He is...

(Image)

The Colonel.

A challenger appears!

[The UK in Exile]

Arthur Wellesley - because fuck being beaten.

Well, actually, I wrote an essay on this, basically, for my school's Sixth Form Essay Competition.

(Excerpts from) ‘Play up! and play the game!’ – To what extent has ‘Britishness’ been demonstrated by British Officers?

'Frankly, I had enjoyed the war...'

Adrian Carton de Wiart was born in Belgium and was sent to boarding school in Britain. Whereupon in 1899 he signed up as ‘Trooper Carton’ in the British Army, claimed to be six years older than he was and was sent to South Africa. Having been invalided home after being shot, he was commissioned before returning to South Africa. In Somaliland he was again shot – this time twice in the face, losing his eye and part of his ear (London Gazette, 15/5/15). Throughout World War One he was wounded seven times and even removed his own fingers after a doctor refused to operate on them (Hastings 2007, p446). Gaining a Victoria Cross in 1916, he later described his experiences in the war as ‘so much fun’ (Carton de Wiart, p89). He then involved himself with the British Embassy in Poland, the German Invasions of Poland and Norway, Ireland, and was flying to Yugoslavia in 1941 when his plane was forced down in the sea – resulting in the one-armed man swimming a mile to Italian Controlled Libya. As a prisoner in Italy he then made five escape attempts, including seven months of tunnelling, resulting in spending eight days on the run in Italy before being recaptured: while being a 61 year old, one-armed, eye patch-wearing, scarred man who couldn’t speak Italian. He was described as holding the ‘record for bad language’ in the camp (Ranfurly, p123) before being taken by the Italians to become an ambassador of good faith as they attempted to surrender.

'Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.'

Jack Churchill, while having a shorter career, was undoubtedly far more ‘eccentric’. Quoted as saying ‘any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly armed’, he was the only known British Soldier to kill an enemy using a Longbow (Young 1969). As Three Commando 2IC, and later Two Commando OC, he led landings at Vågsøy, Catania and Salerno with his broadsword at his hip, with his bow and arrow on his back and with bagpipes under his arm (Parker, p133). In Yugoslavia he was captured after a mortar shell killed or wounded his entire complement of Commandos, being knocked out by grenades mid-way through playing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" (Parker, pp150-152). While in captivity he attempted to walk to the Baltic alongside an RAF Officer in order to escape. Following that, near the end of the war he convinced an Army unit commander to relieve the SS Garrison of the camp after concerns were raised over the possibility of executions (Koblank 2006). Rounding off the war he walked one hundred and fifty miles to Verona to reach a US force and was sent to Burma to fight the Japanese. Upon arriving in India he remarked ‘If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years’ (Smith, 2005) after hearing the Atomic Bombs had forced the Japanese to surrender. After the war he continued in the British Army, being deployed in Palestine before retiring.

"Attend a German school sir? I would rather cut my hands off and blind myself in one eye. Only an English school is good enough for me."
(young Wintle, on being told by his father that he was to attend a German school)

Lieutenant Colonel A.D. Wintle is possible one of the most eccentric people to have lived – even when compared to the above. In World War One his first action resulted in him being covered with the entrails of his recently-introduced Platoon Sergeant as a mortar strike erupted around him. Petrified, he stood to attention, saluted and began singing the National Anthem, later writing: ‘Within thirty seconds I was able to become again an Englishman of action and to carry out calmly the duties I had been trained to perform.’ (Wintle, 1968) During the War he also captured the village of Vesle singlehandedly, stating after he handed it over to the official attacking force of New Zealanders that, while he had no recollection of his actions, ‘It does sound the sort of thing I'd do’. In Ypres he was escorting a gun carriage across land when a shell burst, killing the horse and hospitalising him, his first words allegedly being ‘Is the horse alright?’ While at said hospital he discovered that a trooper of his regiment was dying of Scarlet Fever in bed, so he shoved the doctors aside and said the following: ‘Now look here. It's against Kings Regulations for a Dragoon to die in bed. Now I order you to stop dying at once! And when you do get up, get your bloody hair cut!’. Trooper Cedric Mays recovered and lived to the age of 95. In World War Two Wintle was imprisoned in the tower for threatening Air Commodore A.R. Boyle with a pistol after the RAF Officer refused to give him a plane to fly to France and rally the French Air Force to relocate to Britain. En-route to the Tower, the Private escorting him lost the warrant, so he declared the man incompetent and ordered him to remain there. The Colonel then travelled back to the office and looked for an Officer to sign a new warrant; finding he was the highest ranked officer present Wintle signed his own arrest warrant and returned to the train (Wintle, 1968) (TvTropes). His eccentricity didn’t stop here, as he was released with two of three charges dropped and an official reprimand for the ‘threatening with a gun’. After a deployment to Syria he was then sent to Vichy France undercover to report on the state of British PoWs. Betrayed, tried as a spy and imprisoned, the English Officer then proceeded to explain to his captors that it was his duty to escape – escaping shortly afterwards. After being recaptured, he went on hunger strike for thirteen days because of the ‘slovenly appearance of the guards who are not fit to guard an English officer!’ (Wintle 1968). This relented when they paraded in their best uniform, however he still frequently reprimanded them for being cowardly traitors until he escaped successfully by sawing through his cell’s window’s bars. Following this, as stated by the Commander of the prison on the Colonel’s ‘This Is Your Life’, ‘because of Wintle's dauntless determination to maintain English standards and his constant challenge to our authority’ the entire garrison of over 250 men defected to the resistance (Wintle, p242).

"Don't worry, I've got an umbrella."

Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter had a shorter career of eccentricity by these standards, yet still managed to top many of the preceding acts in Operation Market Garden. He lead bayonet charges against German Infantry while brandishing an umbrella and wearing a bowler hat, trained his men in the use of the bugle for inter-company communication, disabled a German Armoured Car with an umbrella-thrust to the driver’s view port, and stated the reason he carried it was because ‘it would be quite obvious to anyone that the bloody fool carrying the umbrella could only be an Englishman’ thus solving the problem of him not remembering the passwords (Pegasus Archive). The Major notably escorted the Battalion Padre across a street in the middle of a mortar strike, saying ‘Don't worry, I've got an umbrella.’, and used it when inspecting defences: citing his reason for carrying it as ‘…what if it rains?’ (Pegasus Archive). The Major was captured after the defence of Arnhem failed, before escaping and being disguised as a deaf and dumb son of a lawyer by the Dutch Resistance, eventually leading roughly a Battalion-strength of men back to Allied Lines.

The British tendency to confuse eccentricity with competence goes a long way to explaining why we always start our wars so very poorly.

[Kouralia]

Arthur Wellesley - because fuck being beaten.

Well, actually, I wrote an essay on this, basically, for my school's Sixth Form Essay Competition.

(Excerpts from) ‘Play up! and play the game!’ – To what extent has ‘Britishness’ been demonstrated by British Officers?

'Frankly, I had enjoyed the war...'

'Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.'

"Attend a German school sir? I would rather cut my hands off and blind myself in one eye. Only an English school is good enough for me."
(young Wintle, on being told by his father that he was to attend a German school)

"Don't worry, I've got an umbrella."

The British tendency to confuse eccentricity with competence goes a long way to explaining why we always start our wars so very poorly.

tbf, all of those were competent officers... just... odd.

But yeah, I agree. But it's too mainstream to pick your favourite military commander on whether or not they're competent (which roughly 90% will be, most likely).

[The Serbian Empire]

Caligula for his war on Poseidon. I think he was so Roman as to not war against Neptune.

[The UK in Exile]

The British tendency to confuse eccentricity with competence goes a long way to explaining why we always start our wars so very poorly.

tbf, all of those were competent officers... just... odd.

But yeah, I agree. But it's too mainstream to pick your favourite military commander on whether or not they're competent (which roughly 90% will be, most likely).

tbf, being captured, regardless of the circumstance, generally isn't an indicator that your a great officer. Especially, in the instance of the guy who was a spy.

[Kouralia]

tbf, all of those were competent officers... just... odd.

But yeah, I agree. But it's too mainstream to pick your favourite military commander on whether or not they're competent (which roughly 90% will be, most likely).

tbf, being captured, regardless of the circumstance, generally isn't an indicator that your a great officer. Especially, in the instance of the guy who was a spy.

Hmm, well the wiki article on Wintle states:

While waiting to make contact with sympathetic elements of the Vichy French government Wintle was betrayed, arrested as a spy and imprisoned by Vichy.

He subsequently managed to escape (twice) and turned the garrison into resistance fighters.

de Wiart... was shot down a mile away from land, and then swam to Italian Libya where he was captured. He made five escape attempts in Italy, including spending 8 days uncaptured. Note that all of this is being done by a 61 year old, one-eyed, one-armed man who speaks no Italian.

Churchill was captured, okay, I'll give you that. But it's hard not to be captured when you're KO'd by high explosive while leading a commando raid.

Tatham-Warter... was captured (after Arnhem, which is hardly able to be blamed on him, considering the last radio message out of Arnhem was 'Out of ammunition, God Save The King.'), okay, but:

He was admitted to the St. Elizabeth Hospital, but only stayed there throughout the daylight hours of Thursday 21st before escaping with his Second-in-Command, Captain Tony Frank. After dark, once their German nurses were out of sight, the pair dressed themselves, climbed down from their first floor window, and then crawled through a garden next to the hospital before, exhausted from their ordeal over the previous days, coming to a halt close by.

None of them, to the extent I was able to find out over a month-or two's research, were captured through sheer incompetence.

[Gujiristan]

Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Pompey, Octavian/Augustus Caesar, Trajan, Stillicho, Alaric, Belisarius, Heraclius, Charles Martel, Saladin, the guy who led the Ottoman army to conquer the southern Balkans (forgot his name), the Duke of Parma (the one in Flanders during the Spanish Armada fiasco), Frederick the Great, Napoleon (duh), Murat, Davout, Massena, Ney, Soult, Wellesley, Suvorov, Bagration, Bugeaud, Sherman, elder Moltke, Foch, Rennenkampf, Brusilov, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Manstein, Rommel, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Patton, Zhukov, Konev...Probably more that I've forgotten.

[Jogentagana]

The one and only - Erwin Rommel.

[United Counties of Maine]

Who are your favorite military commanders from throughoutt history? And a follow up, why are they your favorite?

If I had to pick one favorite throughout history, it would have to be Brevet Major General Joshua L. Chamberlain.

For those who don't know and why: He was born and raised in Maine.
[*]School teacher at Bowdoin College.
[*]Fluent in nine languages other than english.
[*] His most famous achievement was defending Little Round Top at Gettysburg (which would later earn him the Medal of Honour). If you want to read about that chapter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Round_Top#Battle_of_Little_Round_Top
[*] Was wounded at Petersburg and thought dead. In all he had six horses shot out from under him and was wounded six times throughout the war.
[*] At the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Chamberlain (on his own) gave the commander to come to attention and "carry arms", as a show of respect to the confederates.
[*]Elected Governor of Maine four times.

I've read and own his book "The Passing of the Armies".

[Mostrov]

-snip-

A further excerpt on Wintle:

THE FORTUNES OF MAJOR WINTLE

The grim situation in 1940 was tempered by lighter episodes; and although to record may appear to hold up the narrative, it may serve to correct the impression of a perpetually breathtaking pace that would be suggested by a compact account merely of the high peaks of my activity. Fortunately we could usually afford the time to laugh, and could then tackle our problems all the better. For me, one of the brightest of such episodes started on 17th June in the middle of the Knickebein flurry, and it was brought about by the impending collapse of France - now only five days away. I was walking back across Horseguards Parade to my office after lunch, perhaps one of the rare lunches that I had as Lindemann's guest in the Athenaeum, when there were military footsteps behind me, and I received a hearty slap on the back from the brisk figure of Freddie Wintle.
'Hello, old boy, how's your war going?' he asked. I told him that for me it had taken an interesting turn, and in reply he told me why he thought we were generally in such a mess. 'The trouble with this war,' he said 'is that you can't criticize anybody. It's "Well done, Neville", or "Good old Tom" or something like that. Why man, you're not in a decent Cavalry Mess five minutes before you have been called a bloody fool - and you're the better for it!' With that we parted, he towards the Air Ministry in King Charles Street, and I to Broadway.
Evidently Wintle proceed to put his doctrine into immediate practice, but I did not at first correlate it with I read a day or so later on a placard: 'ARMY OFFICER IN THE TOWER'. When I bought a paper I found that it referred to Freddie Wintle. The basic reason for his annoyance on the Horseguards, which he had not told me, was that he had been ordered back to his Regiment when he believed that if only he could to France he could so stiffen the morale of the French that they would not give in. He claimed to know the French better than most because he had been an instructor at the Ecole de Guerre, the French Staff College at St. Cyr. After leaving me, he had gone straight to the Director of Air Intelligence to protest at his posting whereupon, it seems, that he thought that the Director had accused him of cowardice in not wishing to rejoin his Regiment. This of course was fatal, for no one could question Wintle's gallantry. He thereupon drew his revolver in indignation and said, 'You are your kind ought to be shot', or words to that effect. He was arrested and sent the Tower.
Looking forward to his Court Martial was one of our light reliefs during the Battle of Britain. It duly came off, and he appeared in immaculate uniform, leather and brass shining brightly; drawing a silk handkerchief from his pocket he flicked some imaginary ducks from his beautifully pipeclayed breeches, returned the handkerchief to his pocket, crossed his legs, screwed in his monocle, folded his arms and glared at the Court. He had to answer three main charges. The first was that he had faked defective vision in his right eye, the implication being that he thereby wished to avoid Active Service. This he was easily able to refute, because not only did he have one eye useless as a result of being wounded in World War I, but he had also bluffed the examining specialist into thinking he had two good eyes, and he called the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Edmund Ironside, as a witness. This charge was therefore dropped.
The more serious charge was that he had produced a pistol in the presence of the Air Commodore whom he had threatened to shoot, along with himself, and he had 'said words to the effect that certain members of His Majesty's Ministers, all Officers of the Royal Air Force above the rank of Group Captain and most senior Army Officers ought to be shot'. Instead of denying this as regards the Ministers, he proposed to substantiate it as a patriotic action and read of a list of the Ministers who he suggested should be shot.
When he got to Kingsley Wood, at No. 7, the Prosecuting Advocate interrupted to say that he did not propose to proceed with this charge, which was accordingly dropped.
Finally Wintle was asked, 'When you produced the pistol in the presence of the Air Commodore, was it your intention to intimidate him?' With his monocle held more firmly than ever, he replied, 'Intimidate the Air Commodore? Oh dear me, no! Why, I have worked with the Air Commodore for over a year, and I well know that he is the type of Officer that if you rushed into his room and shouted at the top of your voice "The Air Ministry's on fire!" all he would do would be to take up his pen and write a minute to someone about it!' He was on a pretty good wicket, in that he was being tried by an Army Court Martial for being rude to an Air Force Officer, and he escaped with a severe reprimand.
I lost sight of him after that for some time; being the reverse of a coward, and finding service with his Regiment too inactive, he volunteered to go into France as an agent with the Special Operations Executive, where he was captured by the Vichy French and we heard of him languishing in a Toulon jail. He escaped into Spain at the second attempt, and I again lost trace of him.
At the end of the war he was about to make a dramatic reappearance, this time in the house in which I had been born. The lady of the house was much alarmed to hear a great crash in her sitting-room and found that a motor car had come through its front window. The house was on a bend, which the driver had obviously taken too fast. When he stepped out, it was Freddie Wintle, who at the time was standing as Liberal candidate for Norwood against Duncan Sandys. 'My dear lady,' he said, 'I am most frightfully sorry. I must have upset your nerves. What you need is some sherry which I will now go and get.' And just as on the occasion of my first meeting him, he went to the local pub and returned with the sherry. I am sorry that he did not become our Member of Parliament.
Again I lost sight of him, until I read of a retired Army officer who lured a solicitor to a secluded flat and removed his trousers because the officer - who once again turned out to be Wintle - thought that the solicitor was tricking one his female relatives into making over her money. The solicitor summoned him for assault, and Wintle was sent to prison for six months. Nevertheless, when he came out he managed to prove his case against the solicitor and he fought the legal battle right up to the House of Lords, without any professional aid. He won. The Times' headline being 'CAVALRY OFFICER JUMPS LAST FENCE TO WIN'.
Wintle died in 1966. Fittingly, his friend ex-Trooper Cedric Mays of the Royals on the occasion of his funeral drank a bottle of Glenfiddich and then, through a mist of whiskey and tears, sang the Cavalry Last Post and Cavalry Reveille to the astonished worshippers in Canterbury Cathedral, the Chapel of the Cavalrymen of Britain.

As for the question, perhaps Timur or Eugene of Savoy?

[Danhanjeedh]

mehmet II, Hannibal Barca, Saladin, Tran Hung Dao, Vo Nguyen Giap, Napoleon Bonabarte, Ghengis Khan, Georgy Zhukov ect. ect. I simply can't chose... There have been so many great men along history.

[United Marxist Nations]

The British cavalry was eliminated at Waterloo

Not really:

Many popular histories suggest that the British heavy cavalry were destroyed as a viable force following their first, epic charge. Examination of eyewitness accounts reveal, however, that far from being ineffective, they continued to provide very valuable services. They counter-charged French cavalry numerous times (both brigades),[71] halted a combined cavalry and infantry attack (Household Brigade only),[72][73] were used to bolster the morale of those units in their vicinity at times of crisis, and filled gaps in the Anglo-allied line caused by high casualties in infantry formations (both brigades).[74]

Plus, you have to remember the weather conditions the night before the battle; the ground was so muddy that cavalry and artillery had difficulty maneuvering; this would place a lot more difficulty onto an attacking army than on a defending army

Something which Napoleon would have been well aware of, and yet he chose to attack anyway - military genius at work?

He had to attack, the Russians were moving to give the British reinforcements; he only had a limited time to attack.