Great War Service
In December 1914 Locker-Lampson received a commission in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. This was largely on the basis of an understanding with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, that he would personally fund the establishment of an armoured car squadron for the Royal Naval Air Service's Armoured Car Division. After training at Whale Island, Hampshire and in north Norfolk near his family home, Newhaven Court, Cromer, Locker-Lampson's No. 15 Squadron was sent to France, then operated in the unoccupied portion of Belgium on attachment to the Belgian Army during much of 1915.
By the end of 1915, trench warfare meant there was no scope for armoured cars on the Western Front and most of the RNAS's armoured car squadrons were disbanded by the Admiralty. However, three squadrons of RNAS armoured cars were assembled and sent by ship to Murmansk as the Armoured Car Expeditionary Force (ACEF), also known as the Russian Armoured Car Division, with Locker-Lampson in command in order to show support for Britain's Russian ally. The ACEF operated with the Russian Army in several areas, including Galicia, Romania, and the Caucasus.
Locker-Lampson became somewhat entangled in Russian politics at this time. He said later that he had been asked to participate in the 1916 assassination of Rasputin, and that he had a secret plan to get Tsar Nicholas II out of Russia after his abdication in March 1917. It is also alleged that in September 1917 he was involved in Kornilov's attempted coup against the provisional government of Kerensky.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, the ACEF was withdrawn from Russia. In 1918 selected personnel and armoured cars transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and served as 'Duncars' within Dunsterforce in Persia and Turkey, though without Commander Locker-Lampson, who in 1918 became the Ministry of Information's Russian Representative.
Read more about this topic: Oliver Locker-Lampson
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