William Peyton
British Army general (1866-1931)
General Sir William Eliot Peyton, (7 May 1866 – 14 November 1931) was a British Army officer who served as Military Secretary to the British Expeditionary Force from 1916 to 1918. He was Delhi Herald of Arms Extraordinary at the time of the Delhi Durbar of 1911.
Early life
The third son of Colonel John Peyton, commanding officer of the 7th Dragoon Guards, Peyton was educated at Brighton College.
Early military career
In 1885, Peyton enlisted in the ranks in the 7th Dragoon Guards, a regiment that his father had commanded between 1871 and 1876. The explanation of this was his failure to pass the entrance examination of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Having risen to sergeant, Peyton was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 7th Dragoon Guards on 18 June 1887, and promoted lieutenant in 1890. He was appointed regimental adjutant in 1892. In 1896 he transferred to the 15th Hussars and was promoted captain.
He was seconded to the Egyptian Army and saw service with the Dongola Expeditionary Force in 1896, and was mentioned in despatches, then in the Sudan in 1897 and 1898, where he was dangerously wounded and his horse killed under him by a spear. In the Sudan he was again mentioned in despatches, and received the Distinguished Service Order.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Peyton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.