Commonwealth general officer

[JBFloyd]

Can anyone identify a "Maj General MacQuiggins, 8th Army"?

The context is an awarded American Silver Star, probably awarded early in the US participation in North Africa. Noboby by this name appears in any of my sources on British Army officers, so the thought is that he was Australian or a New Zealander. The assumption is that it's the British Eighth Army, not the US 8th Army.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Chris Boonzaier]

Googling "MacQuiggins" does not get a single hit. "McQuiggins" gets only 4 pages from the whole net. Mainly seem to be Canada related.

[Chris Boonzaier]

According to this... originally an Irish name that did not survive crossing the Atlantic...

http://www.geoghegan.org/clan/vars.html

[Guest Rick Research]

Nobody of that name in the 1935 British edition of Who's Who.

Omission of a first name seems rather slipshod-- pehaps the last name is mangled as well?

[Steen Ammentorp]

While I can't claim that my database is complete (far from it) I think it comes close when talking about British and Commonwealth generals if you disregard brigadiers and a few local major-generals, and I have no one by that name or anything that comes close. So I suspect that Rich is correct that there is an error in the name or rank.

The one that I have that come the closest is US Brigadier General Raymond Eugene McQuillin, who was in North Africa at the time with Old Ironsides, but wrong army and unit.

Btw. could it be a "translation" of a British/Commonwealth air force rank?

Kind Regards

Steen Ammentorp

The Generals of World War II

Edited January 15, 2007 by Steen Ammentorp

[JBFloyd]

Thanks to all on this effort.