Lord Edward Gleichen KCVO CB CMG DSO

Although of German origin with the hereditary title of Count, Edward Gleichen was very much an Englishman. He was distantly related to Queen Victoria and served as a Page of Honour in the 1870s. He was born on 15 Jan 1863 and was 18 when he joined the Grenadier Guards. He was in the Guards Camel Regiment in 1885 and seconded to the Egyptian Army in 1896. He served in the Grenadiers during the Boer War and was badly wounded at Modder River on 28 Nov 1899. The following year he was DAAG in South Africa. He was a lieutenant-colonel serving in Cairo from 1901 to 03, and was Military Attache in Berlin from 1903 to 06. He did not get on well with the Kaiser and was then posted to Washington, but did not establish good relations with President Roosevelt either. In the First World War he commanded the 15th Brigade, and from 1915 reached the rank of Major-General to command the 37th Division. The photo shows him in the uniform of an Equerry to King Edward VII in 1901. He was known as Count Gleichen at that time, but the German title was dropped in WW1. He married Hon Sylvia Gay Edwardes in July 1910. He wrote 5 books, the last of which was an account of his time in the Grenadier Guards 'A Guardsman's Memories' (1932) and he died on 14 Dec 1937.

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