Charles Armstrong (British Army officer)

Armstrong was born on 11 June 1897 and was educated at Cheltenham College. After attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment in April 1915 during the First World War. Seconded to the Machine Gun Corps, he served in France from 1916 to 1918, where he was twice wounded and, in March 1918, made a prisoner of war. Repatriated in December 1918, by which time the war was over due to the armistice with Germany, he served in North Russia during the Russian Civil War in 1919 and was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for gallantry. The citation for his MC, appearing in The London Gazette in January 1920, reads as follows: He was present in Mesopotamia 1920-21 and on the Indian North West Frontier 1930-31, serving much of his inter-war service with the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment in Egypt, Sudan, Hong Kong and India. ==Second World War==

In October 1939, a month after the outbreak of the Second World War, Armstrong, now a major, went to France with the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, before taking command of the 1/6th Battalion in April 1940 as a temporary lieutenant colonel. Evacuated from Dunkirk a month later, he remained in command of the battalion until April 1942. In April 1942 he was posted to command the 70th (Young Soldiers) Battalion, and later 1st Battalion, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment which, in early 1943 he took to North Africa. According to some sources, he was carefully selected for this mission because of his lack of political contacts or skill. Together with members of his mission, Armstrong parachuted into Yugoslavia at the end of September 1943. Before he was dispatched to Chetnik headquarters, a previous member of British mission with the Chetniks, Colonel Bailey, advised him that the Chetniks were angry and that Mihailović "won't hear of British anymore". The United Kingdom had provided substantial supplies to Yugoslav Communist forces who opposed the Chetniks, while the BBC repeatedly gave the Communist forces credit for the anti-Axis actions of Chetniks, especially during September and October 1943. For example, when Chetniks attacked the German garrison in Prijepolje on 11 September, killed 200 German soldiers and captured the town, the BBC credited Tito's Communist Partisans with the victory. Armstrong and Seitz took part in the Chetnik action against Axis controlled units protecting the railway bridge over Drina in Višegrad. In this attack about 2,500 Chetniks killed about 350 Ustaše and German soldiers and captured a lot of ammunition and arms. Before the Chetniks stormed into Višegrad, they first destroyed four smaller bridges in Mokra Gora. British media, including the BBC, credited Yugoslav Communist Partisans for this successful action by the Chetniks. In November 1943 the Chetniks attacked Axis positions at Nova Varoš and Kalna, and both actions were again attributed to Communists by the BBC. Archival evidence, published in 1980 for the first time, confirms that some actions against Axis carried by Mihailović and his Chetniks with Armstrong were mistakenly credited to Tito and his Communist forces. Armstrong sent an angry protest to the BBC insisting on the publication of correct information, to no avail. Some authors blame the persistent misreporting of BBC and attribution of successful Chetnik anti-Axis actions to Communists on a supposed strong network of Soviet spies in the BBC and the British Ministry of Information. This misreporting changed British public opinion and even influenced some high-ranking officials. But Churchill's reason was the evidence of Ultra decrypts from the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley Park (which he read; they were secret until the 1970s) that Tito's Partisans were a "much more effective and reliable ally in the war against Germany"; see Yugoslavia and the Allies. Tensions between American and British mission Almost as soon as he reached Chetnik headquarters, the relation of British mission toward Mihailović significantly deteriorated and tensions between American and British mission began to develop, Chetniks ignore Armstrong's orders to destroy bridges Armstrong inherited his predecessor’s (Colonel Bailey) task to convince Mihailovic to increase his anti-Axis activities without providing him with adequate supplies. Armstrong confirmed that Colonel Bailey insisted that Chetniks should not disarm Italians in the valley of river Lim and to avoid conflict with Partisans with final consequence that the Chetniks were forced to leave this valley. Until December 1943 the British army delivered only 30 tons of arms to Chetniks and 18,000 tons to the Communist Partisans, who used many British arms to attack Chetniks. Armstrong refused to participate in the Ba Congress held between 25 and 28 January 1944 because he was dissatisfied with the refusal of the Chetniks to follow British requests to perform two sabotages against the Germans. Armstrong insisted that Chetniks should destroy bridges over river Morava and river Ibar near Raška as condition for his participation at the Congress. Leaving Yugoslavia, Armstrong returned to England and, in June 1944, took command of the British Airborne Liaison Unit to the Polish Parachute Brigade. He remained in the UK for the remainder of the war. == 1945 and after ==

, Surrey. In January 1945 Armstrong was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his war services. In August 1945, now a substantive Lieutenant Colonel, he took command of the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment in Austria, returning to England in November 1946 to command a prisoner of war camp for Germans. In retirement he lived in Camberley, Surrey and was a member of the Special Forces Club. He died on 11 December 1985, at the age of 88. There is a memorial plaque to Armstrong in the East Surrey Regiment Chapel in All Saints Church, Kingston upon Thames. ==References==