General (later Field Marshal) Sir Gerald Templer, KG, GCB, CB, GCMG, KBE, DSO (1898–1979) had a traditional military education at Wellington College and the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst (1915). He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers on 16 August 1916 and after the war, he served with them in Persia and Mesopotamia until he returned to England in 1922. He attended the British Army's Staff College from January 1928 to December 1929. He then served as a company commander in Egypt and Palestine during the Arab rebellions 1935–36, and was awarded a DSO and Bar and a Mention in Despatches.

At the outbreak of World War II, he was a Major, acting Lieutenant Colonel, at the War Office, London, and in September 1939, he served as an intelligence officer at the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force in France under Major General Sir F.N. Mason-Macfarlane. After he returned to England, he became Brigadier General Staff under General B.L. Montgomery, then commanding XII Corps, and was thereafter one of Montgomery's most fervent admirers.

In 1942, at the age of forty-four he became the youngest Lieutenant General in the British Army and he served briefly in North Africa and Italy. He reverted to the rank of Major General to command the 56th Infantry Division and then the 6th Armoured Division in Italy, where he was wounded in 1944 when a land mine blew up the army lorry in front of his staff car while travelling in convoy. The looted contents of the lorry fell on top of him and damaged his spine, and he was evacuated to England. He then worked in the War Office until he became Director of Civil Affairs in the British Zone of Germany under Montgomery, who was by then a Field Marshal commanding the British 21st Army Group. He regarded this period as valuable experience for Malaya although his time in Germany was marred by his having been involved in the summary dismissal at the end of World War II of Dr Konrad Adenauer, then Mayor of Cologne, for incompetence and inefficiency.