Hubert Huddleston


Sir Hubert Jervoise Huddleston, was a senior British Army officer who served as General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland District.

Military career

Educated at Felsted School and Bedford School, Huddleston joined the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Coldstream Guards in 1898. He then served in the Second Boer War. He took part in operations in the Orange Free State from April to May 1900, and the Transvaal in May and June, including actions near Johannesburg and at the Battle of Diamond Hill. During the war he transferred to the Dorsetshire Regiment as a second lieutenant on 26 May 1900, and was promoted to lieutenant on 19 November 1901. He was mentioned in despatches for actions in December 1901. He stayed in South Africa throughout the war, which ended June 1902 with the Peace of Vereeniging. Four months later he left Cape Town with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Dorset Regiment on the SS German in late September 1902, and arrived at Southampton in late October, when they were posted to Portland.
Huddleston also served in the First World War and became General Officer Commanding Sudan in 1924, and was appointed Commandant of the Sudan Defence Force, the local troops, when they were established a year later. He was appointed commander of the 14th Infantry Brigade in 1930 and then joined Eastern Command in India in 1934. He became Commander for the Baluchistan District in Western Command of India in 1935. He was appointed Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and was then briefly GOC Northern Ireland District from April to July 1940 before being appointed Governor General of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan later that year. He retired from that post in the face of considerable local criticism in 1947.