Sir Frank King
General Sir Frank Douglas King, GCB, MBE was a British Army officer who served as General Officer Commanding of the British Army in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He held a number of other senior posts in the British Army, having begun his military career in the ranks during the Second World War. King was born on March 9, 1919, in Brightwell, which was then in Berkshire, where his parents, Arthur and Kate King, were farmers. He was educated at Wallingford Grammar School, and but for the outbreak of the Second World War would have carried on the family farm. Initially in the ranks of a Territorial Army unit, he was commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant on July 4, 1940. Now a war substantive lieutenant, he briefly transferred to the Royal Fusiliers from June 14, 1941, and then to the Reconnaissance Corps on July 15, and finally to the Parachute Regiment on October 19, 1943. He participated in Operation Market Garden, and was wounded and taken...
