Born on 12 February 1891 in
Belgravia,
Westminster,
London, the son of Edward Henry Loyd, Charles Loyd was educated at
Eton and the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was
commissioned as a
second lieutenant into the
Coldstream Guards on 3 September 1910. Another future general,
Arthur Smith, was among his fellow graduates. He was promoted to
lieutenant in April 1912. Loyd served on the
Western Front during the
First World War with the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, then part of the
4th (Guards) Brigade of the
2nd Division. Promoted to
captain in July 1915, he was
wounded in action four times, thrice
mentioned in despatches, including on 1 January 1918, awarded the
Distinguished Service Order, the
Military Cross in 1915, and the French
Croix de guerre. He was also, by war's end, a
brevet lieutenant colonel and, as
commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, one of the youngest battalion commanders in the British Army. The citation for his MC reads: After the war Loyd was selected for the first postwar course at the
Staff College, Camberley, from 1919 to 1920. In 1934, he became a
staff officer at the
War Office in London, moving on to be a
brigadier on the General Staff of
British Troops in Egypt in 1936. and was appointed
General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 2nd Infantry Division, three months before the outbreak of the
Second World War. When the war did arrive Loyd's division, comprising the
4th,
5th and
6th Infantry Brigades and supporting units, was soon sent to France, where it formed part of Lieutenant General
Sir John Dill's
I Corps of the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF). After being unengaged for the first eight months of the conflict, his division found itself heavily engaged in the
Battle of France, which began on 10 May 1940, and the subsequent
retreat to Dunkirk, which took part in the latter part of the month, where it was withdrawn to England in the
Dunkirk evacuation. Loyd was not to see most of this, however, as on 16 May, while attending a conference, he suddenly fainted, the strain of the last few days having caused him to completely break down. He was evacuated to England, with command of the 2nd Division passing to Brigadier
Noel Irwin, commander of the 6th Brigade. , Surrey. Shortly afterwards, in June, Loyd succeeded Major General
Henry Willcox as Director of Infantry at the War Office in London. This post was held until February 1941 when he was promoted to the
acting rank of lieutenant general and became
chief of staff to General
Sir Alan Brooke, then the
Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, who had been a fellow student at the Staff College some twenty years earlier and who had long thought highly of "Budget" Loyd. He was to hold this post for just over a year before moving on to be
General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Southern Command in March 1942. In retirement Loyd was a
deputy lieutenant of
Norfolk. He lived at
Geldeston Hall in Norfolk. He was a
justice of the peace for the county in 1954, and from 1945 to 1966 he served as Colonel of the Coldstream Guards. ==Notes==