Francis Mitchell (British Army officer)


Francis Neville Mitchell CB CBE DSO was a British Army officer who commanded 6th Armoured Division.

Military career

Born the eldest son of Admiral Francis Mitchell and a cousin of Patrick Mitchell KCVO, Mitchell graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars in 1924.
He served in World War II as an Instructor at the Staff College, Camberley from 1940, as a General Staff Officer with 9th Armoured Division from 1941 and as Commanding Officer of 1st Royal Gloucestershire Hussars from 1942. He was appointed Commander of 26th Armoured Brigade in Italy in 1944, and Assistant Deputy Adjutant-General at Allied Forces Headquarters in 1945. At the end of the War he was appointed CBE.
He went on to be Commander of 22nd Armoured Brigade in 1947, Brigadier Royal Armoured Corps for the British Army of the Rhine in 1949 and Chief of Staff for I Corps in Germany in 1951. His last appointment was as General Officer Commanding 6th Armoured Division in 1953 before his sudden death in a horse riding accident in Germany in 1954.

Family

In 1935 he married Ann Christian Livingstone-Learmouth. Their daughter Mona served as Private Secretary to Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, from 1974 until 1991, and was appointed a DCVO on retirement. Francis Mitchell's grandfather, Col. Herbert Leonard Mitchell, married Mary Arabella Susan Reynolds, the niece of Major-General John William Reynolds and the granddaughter of General Charles Reynolds. His brother Lieut-Cmdr David Reynolds Mitchell was killed one week before the end of WWII. He is the cousin of Maj. Douglas Reynolds VC.