Frank Lucas Netlam Giles

Colonel Frank Lucas Netlam Giles (1879-1930), Royal Engineers, D.S.O. (1915), O.B.E. (1923): British soldier and military attaché.

Giles was only son of the Hon. Frank Giles, ICS (North West Province and Oudh), the son of Frank George Giles (1815-) C.E., elder son of the canal and railway engineer Francis Giles.

Alfred Giles (1816-1895), MP for Southampton, was a great-uncle and Sir Charles Tyrrell Giles, K.C. (1850-1940), was a first cousin-once-removed. He was educated at Marlborough and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

Giles served in Boer/South African War, 1902 (Queen's Medal, three clasps); was part of European War, 1914–17, the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) / Kamerun Campaign in Kamerun / Cameroons Expeditionary Force 1914-1916 (despatches), and was made Lieutenant-Colonel while serving in France in 1916-18 (despatches).

After the Great War Giles served as British Commissioner on the (Serbo) Yugoslav-Bulgarian International Frontier Commission between 1920 and 1922/23 and the (Serbo) Yugoslav-Albanian International Frontier Commission (Albanian Frontier Commission) between 1922 and 1925. He was promoted to Colonel (temporarily) on 30 May 1925. Military attaché to Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia (SCS) in Belgrade and Athens, 1925-until summer 1929. He was a member of the United Service Club; and lived (1928) at Thurlston House, Fleet, Hants, and with the British Legation, in Belgrade and Athens.

Family


In 1916, he married Elgiva Mary (1890-1970) younger daughter of Captain Charles Ackland-Allen (1854-1934), JP, of The Cross, St Hilary, Vale of Glamorgan, near Cowbridge, by Gertrude, daughter of Henry Bearcroft, of Mere Hall at Hanbury near Droitwich, by his wife Ellen Vernon (1831-1902), daughter of Bromsgrove solicitor George Croft Vernon, of that family of Hanbury Hall.

Elgiva Giles's sister was Dorothy Florence Ackland-Allen (1887-1963), F.R.H.S. (Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society); served in Great War 1914-18 with Y.M.C.A. (France), War Office 1917-19; chairman Glamorgan Federation of Women's Institutes, formerly member Glamorgan Women's Land Army Advisory committee; J.P. (1942) Glamorgan; lady of the manor of St Hilary.

Frank and Elgiva Giles were the parents of Frank Thomas Robertson Giles (31 July 1919 – 30 October 2019) and Elizabeth Elgiva Giles (1917-2005).