Beauchamp Doran

Who was Beauchamp Doran?

Major-General Beauchamp John Colclough Doran, CB, was a British Army officer who commanded the 25th Division during the First World War. Commissioned in 1880, Doran saw service on the staff and with the Royal Irish Regiment through a number of colonial campaigns in the late nineteenth century, culminating in command of a mobile column in the Boer War, where he was seriously wounded. He then commanded a battalion of his regiment, followed by a brigade in the British Expeditionary Force. His brigade was mobilised in 1914, and he saw service during the first months of the First World War before being dismissed in October. He was later reinstated as commander of a brigade in the New Armies, and promoted to the 25th Division before it was sent to France in 1915; he led it on the Western Front until June 1916, when he was relieved and sent home. From 1916 to 1918 he commanded the Army forces in southern Ireland, and then held an administrative post in France before retiring in 1920.