An Original Commander in Chief in India embossed stationery Written and Signed by Field Marshal William Riddell Birdwood, 1st Baron Birdwood. Dated 1908. The letter to Colonel Walton, sending the Chief’s thanks for sending the sports programme and the detail behind it. Field Marshal William Riddell Birdwood, 1st Baron Birdwood, 1865-1951 was a British Army officer. He saw active service in the Second Boer War on the staff of Lord Kitchener. He saw action again in the First World War as Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915, leading the landings on the peninsula and then the evacuation later in the year, before becoming commander-in-chief of the Fifth Army on the Western Front during the closing stages of the war. He went on to be general officer commanding the Northern Army in India in 1920 and Commander-in-Chief, India, in 1925 Provenance: From the family of autograph collector Emily Mary Rose Lee (1869-1949), wife of Colonel William Crawford Walton (1864-1937). Emily was the daughter of William Lee, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Glasgow from 1874 to 1886, and granddaughter of John Lee (1779-1859), Principal of Edinburgh University from 1840 to 1859. Size is 178m x 115mm. Condition is good. Folding crease.