Major General W W Richards CB CBE MC

Collection of 20 folders of low level official correspondence and other items relating to his work as a senior ordnance officer with the BEF in France 1940, in the Middle East 1940 - 1943, in the UK as a Director of Clothing and Stores 1943 - 1946, and as Colonel Commandant of the RAOC 1947 - 1957. Most material relates to the Middle East, including notes on salvage and repair of vehicles and tanks, ammunition stocks, lists of captured equipment, stores, and vehicle spares. The situation in Ethiopia and the Sudan is mentioned, as are the actions at Gazala and El Alamein 1942, and aid for Turkey in 1943. There is also material regarding ordnance aspects of the withdrawal from Burma 1947, and the Rhine Army 1955.

Unrestricted

William Watson Richards was born in 1892, and served with the Territorials in France in 1914. He was commissioned in the AOC in 1915, and was granted a regular Captaincy in the RAOC in 1920, becoming a Major in 1926 and a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1936. On the outbreak of the Second World War he became a Chief Ordnance Officer, and full Colonel from October 1939. He served with the BEF and commanded No 2 Base Ordnance Depot Le Havre, being a Deputy Director of Ordnance Supplies in February 1940.

In April 1940 he was appointed Director of Ordnance Services at GHQ Middle Eastern Forces, with the rank of Brigadier, and directed electrical and mechanical engineering services. He became a Major-General in January 1942, and from that August Deputy Quartermaster General (AE) at GHQ MEF. In March 1943 he returned to the War Office as Director of Clothing and Stores, becoming Controller of Ordnance Services and Warlike Stores in April 1946. He was appointed Colonel Commandant of the RAOC in January 1947 and retired in August 1948. He remained a representative Colonel Commandant RAOC until 1957 and died in 1961.

The collection comprises twenty correspondence files or other principal items covering the period 1939-63, and relate closely to Richards' appointments during those periods. The two documents dating from 1963 have evidently been added from another source. There is also a duplicated ts history of a branch of the Ordnance written in 1928. The correspondence files contain mostly low-level official letters, also various statistical or administrative information regarding the ordnance services, especially in the Middle East during 1939-43. The subject matter is varied, covering such diverse topics as salvage and repair of damaged vehicles, dilution by civilian labour, quantities of captured enemy equipment, aid given to neutral Turkey, precautions against the depradations of cloth beetles and reduction of ordnance costs in the BAOR.