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Giffard LeQuesne Martel

Lieutenant General Sir
Giffard Le Quesne Martel
KCB KBE DSO MC MIMechE
Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel.jpg
Martel in 1942.
Born 10 October 1889
Millbrook, Southampton, Hampshire, England
Died 3 September 1958 (aged 68)
Camberley, Surrey, England
Allegiance  United Kingdom
Service/branch  British Army
Years of service 1908–1945
Rank Lieutenant General
Service number 6628
Unit Royal Engineers
Royal Tank Regiment
Commands held 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division
Battles/wars World War I
World War II
Awards Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Distinguished Service Order
Military Cross

Lieutenant General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel KCB KBE DSO MC MIMechE (10 October 1889 – 3 September 1958) was a British Army officer who served in both World War I and World War II. Familiarly known as "Q Martel" or just "Q", he was a pioneering British military engineer and tank strategist.

He was the son of Brigadier General Charles Philip Martel who was Chief Superintendent of Ordnance Factories. He married Maud Mackenzie on 29 July 1922 and they had two children, a son, Major Peter Martel, MC, born 1938 and a daughter, Gillian, born 1941.

Martel entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1908 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the British Army's Royal Engineers on 23 July 1909. Martel was instrumental in the establishment of The Royal Navy and Army Boxing Association in 1911 and was Army and Inter Services boxing champion both before and after World War I.

In 1916, as a sapper officer with direct experience of the first British use of tanks on the Somme, Martel was put in charge of recreating a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) wide replica of the British and German trench systems, complete with no man's land, at Elveden, Norfolk, as part of a tank training ground.


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